The Fault in Their Stars
by cae2392
Summary: This is The Fault in Our Stars as told from Isaac's point of view.
1. Chapter 1

At seventeen-years-old, I never imagined that I would be witness to a love story so grand it would demand to be told. I wish I could say that this story belongs to me, but it doesn't. Although, it couldn't possibly belong to two more deserving people. I consider myself fortunate to be able to tell their tale.

I could hear him coming from a mile away. His Toyota wasn't loud, but there was no mistaking the repeated revving of an engine immediately followed by the slamming of brakes. When he whipped into the parking lot, his SUV nearly took to two wheels. And it was the curb in front of his chosen parking spot that brought the wheels to a halt. Even with only one good eye, I could plainly see that Augustus Waters had no business driving.

"I'm still convinced you sold your soul to get your license," I said when he opened the door. "Only the devil himself would give you permission to drive."

"Remind me again which one of us will still have a license two weeks from now," Gus said, fully knowing that it would be him.

If anyone else had said something like that, I'd have been angry. But I had an unspoken agreement with Gus. The insensitive jokes only strengthened our friendship. These were the kind of jokes that only two cancer survivors could make. Without those jokes, I'm positive that my inevitable blindness would've swallowed me whole.

"You going to take me in and introduce me to this group you've been telling me about?" he asked.

As we headed for the door, I wondered what he would think of my Support Group. It's not as if those meetings were going to cure me, but it helped to talk. And even during the worst Support Group meetings, I could always count on an exchange of sighs with a member named Hazel. Her lungs were shot, the cancer had consumed them, but that didn't take away her ability to be annoyed by all things Support Group.

If I hadn't been so consumed with my love for Monica, I might have paid more attention to Hazel. Maybe I would've tried harder to figure out who she reminded me of.

We made our way to the basement of that Episcopal church where I introduced Augustus to the rest of the group, and Patrick, the leader of the group. Then we both chose one of the Kindergartener-sized chairs that that made up the Support Group circle.

I saw Hazel come down the stairs and make her way to the snack table before I noticed Gus staring at her as he slouched in his tiny chair. Only then did I remember who Hazel reminded me of, and I instantly regretted inviting Augustus to the support group.

He didn't take his eyes off her when she sat next to me, or when Patrick began the meeting by reciting the serenity prayer. I considered slapping some sense into him, but decided that would draw her attention to his incessant glare. It didn't matter though. He caught her attention all on his own. She probably felt the heat of his eyes burning holes through her.

I don't know what I expected Hazel to do, but I never expected her to stare back at him with equal fervor. She stared at him until _he_ looked away. I have to say, I was impressed by her determination.

When Patrick concluded the prayer, he said, "Isaac, perhaps you'd like to go first today. I know you're facing a challenging time."

"Yeah," I said. "I'm Isaac. I'm seventeen. And it's looking like I'm going to have to get surgery in a couple weeks, after which I'll be blind. Not to complain or anything because I know a lot of us have it worse," –like Hazel– "but yeah, I mean, being blind does sort of suck. My girlfriend helps, though. And friends like Augustus." I folded my hands together in my lap and stared at them. "So, yeah. There's nothing you can do about it."

"We're here for you Isaac," Patrick said. "Let Isaac hear it guys."

The basement echoed with flat rounds of, "We're here for you Isaac."

I couldn't blame them for lying. The only time we were "here" for each other was when we were sitting in that circle listening to each other's tragic stories of the cancer that had consumed each and every one of us. As soon as the circle was broken, we tried to forget each other until the next meeting. That made it easier each time one of us didn't make it to the next meeting.

Patrick chose people at random around the circle. Sixteen-year-old Lida proudly announced that she was still in remission. I wanted to be happy for her, but I couldn't. Not when her body was still intact, and the only way I would ever get rid of my cancer was to have my only remaining eyeball removed from my head.

The stories of treatments and hospital stays and family struggles bounced back and forth until Patrick called on Augustus.

"My name is Augustus Waters," he said. "I'm seventeen. I had a little touch of osteosarcoma a year and a half ago, but I'm just here today at Isaac's request."

The way he downplayed his situation made me shake my head. His "little touch of osteosarcoma" had claimed one of his legs and nearly claimed his life. Augustus never gave himself enough credit for the battle he had fought.

"And how are you feeling?" Patrick asked him.

"Oh, I'm grand." The way he smiled with only the corners of his mouth, I knew it was forced. "I'm on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend."

I wanted to ask Gus what the fun in that was, but Patrick called on Hazel before I could.

"My name is Hazel," she said. "I'm sixteen. Thyroid with mets in my lungs. I'm okay."

I wondered if that was true. I could never judge how well Hazel was doing. She hid her pain well and kept to herself during the Support Group meetings. But I hoped her "okay" status was accurate. I knew I would miss exchanging sighs with her when she was gone.

Near the end of the hour, Patrick said, "Augustus, perhaps you'd like to share your fears with the group."

"My fears?" Gus asked. To which Patrick replied, "Yes."

"I fear oblivion," Gus said. "I fear it like the proverbial blind man who's afraid of the dark."

"Too soon," I said, but I was smiling.

"Was that insensitive?" Augustus asked. "I can be pretty blind to other people's feeling."

Even though I laughed, Patrick failed to understand the humor. He waved his finger and said, "Augustus, please. Let's return to _you_ and _your_ struggles. You said you fear oblivion?"

"I did," Augustus answered.

Confused, Patrick said, "Would, uh, would anyone like to speak to that?"

When Hazel raised her hand, I almost fell off my poor excuse of a chair. In the history of her time in the Support Group, I couldn't think of a single time she had volunteered to speak.

Thrilled, Patrick said, "Hazel!"

She stared directly at Gus as she said, "There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this" –the way she gestured around the room somehow managed to encompass the entire earth– "will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was a time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does."

That was the moment I realized that Hazel was much more than just another one of cancer's helpless victims. She was more than a Support Group cancer patient. Behind her silence, there was a fascinating person. And with the way Gus was looking at her, I knew that he had come to the same conclusion.

To end the meeting, we joined hands to say a prayer. Hazel held one of my hands and Augustus held the other. I swear I could feel both of them wishing I wasn't there.

Patrick prayed for each of us, then he read the names of those who would never return to the Support Group. It was a long list, one that none of us could hope to remember, and we didn't want to. It was too depressing.

Patrick had barely finished uttering, "LIVING OUR BEST LIFE TODAY," before Augustus left his tiny chair behind and made his way to Hazel. "What's your name?" he asked her.

"Hazel," she said.

"No, your full name."

"Um, Hazel Grace Lancaster."

I knew what he was doing, and I couldn't let him, so I walked over to them. Augustus held a finger up and said, "Hold on." He turned to me and said, "That was actually worse than you made it out to be."

"I told you it was bleak," I said.

"Why do you bother with it?"

"I don't know. It kind of helps?"

Augustus leaned closer to me and said, "She's a regular?"

"I know she looks like Caroline–"

"I'll say," he said as he clapped his hands on my shoulders. When he stepped away he said, "Tell Hazel about your clinic."

Leaning on the snack table, I told Hazel about the socially inept surgeon I met with. She made a crack about wanting to meet with him, but I was too busy thinking about Monica to really pay attention.

"Good luck with that," I said. "All right, I should go. Monica's waiting for me. I gotta look at her a lot while I can."

"Counterinsurgence tomorrow?" Gus asked me.

Counterinsurgence was only the best video game to ever be invented, so course I said, "Definitely," then I bolted up the stairs.

I was almost out the door when it occurred to me that I should have forgotten about Monica for one second and drug Augustus out of that basement. I left him down there with Caroline Mathers' doppelganger. I was convinced that this was a terrible mistake.Gus was healthy, and Hazel… Well, Hazel wasn't. Losing Caroline nearly did him in, even if he could hardly bear to be around the version of her the cancer created. I thought about pulling him out by his ear, but then I caught a glimpse of Monica standing outside. I couldn't fight the love I had for her, so I abandoned Gus.

As I exited the door of the church, I hoped that Gus would find even one shred of common sense and run away as fast as he could. But that was not the nature of Augustus Waters. He never backed down from a challenge.


	2. Chapter 2

I didn't just love one thing about Monica; I loved _everything _about her. Not that I tried, but I could find no flaws when it came to her. Even if my eyesight hadn't been doomed, I could have stared at her for hours. I was fascinated by her body, not necessarily in a sexual way, just… fascinated. She was beautiful, her brown hair framed her face in a way that brightened her eyes, and she had curves in all the right places. And beneath that beauty she had a body that had no intentions of betraying her. Her cells weren't riddled with cancer, so she would never lose a limb or an eye or her life.

But then, being a seventeen-year-old boy, I could only stare at her for so long before I had to kiss her, and that's what I was doing when I caught just the shortest of glimpses of Augustus and Hazel standing on the sidewalk together. Not only had he not run away from her, he had followed her. As my lips collided with Monica's again, I considered intervening, but then Monica said, "Always." That was her promise to me. That she would always love me, always be there for me, and I had made the same promise to her.

That's all it took to make me forget about my mission of saving Augustus from Hazel. "Always," I said back to Monica, and the kissing continued.

I didn't think about Augustus again until that night when he called me.

Me: "Hel–"

Gus: "Exactly how long have you been hiding this beautiful girl from me?"

Me: "Who are you – you mean Hazel from Support Group? You're still thinking about her?"

Gus: "Of course I'm still thinking about her. I just dropped her off at her house."

Me: "You what?! Oh my god. I thought you would just flirt with her, not kidnap her!"

Gus: "I can assure you, she came willingly. What's the big deal?"

Me: "She's sick, Augustus. She's sick, and she's not going to get any better."

Gus: "She's a person, Isaac. She's a person, and I won't let her cancer stop me from getting to know her…. I gotta go." And he hung up.

The next day, I parked on the curb in front of Augustus's house and waited for him to get home from school. He almost took out the mailbox at the end of his driveway, then slammed on the brakes only inches from the garage door. He opened the door and put his left leg on the ground to stabilize himself, then drug his prosthetic leg out behind him.

Before he could say anything, I said, "Look, I'm sorry about last night."

I rarely slept anymore. Anytime my head hit a pillow, I would be plagued with the notion that I needed to go _everywhere_ and see _everything._ Sleeping meant that I would miss out on seeing things I would never be able to see again. I only had two weeks left with my eye, after all. But after Gus hung up, it wasn't my eventual blindness that kept me awake. I should've minded my own business. It wasn't my place to decide who Augustus could like. It was then that I decided to stop worrying about him. He was practically a man. He could make his own choices, and I would support them.

"You don't have to apologize," Gus said. "You're not wrong. I know she's sick, and I know she's not going to get any better, but I like her, Isaac. She's different. She reads poetry, and she doesn't eat meat because she wants to minimalize the deaths she's responsible for. And you know what else? _She _knows she's sick, and _she_ knows she's not going to get any better, but she hasn't let that stop her from living."

I had been too busy surviving my own cancer to realize that she was surviving too. She was dying and surviving at the same time. There was no miracle surgery to cut her cancer out of her. I may have had to live with the fact that I would go blind, but she had to live with the fact that she would not survive her battle. Augustus had spent less than a day with her, and already he had learned more about her than I had throughout all of our Support Group meetings.

"Counterinsurgence?" I asked.

"Definitely," Gus said. I knew that this was both a reply and a sign that all was forgiven.

We went into his house and made our way down to his room in the basement. When he turned on the light it bounced off his surplus of trophies and reflected back at me from every direction. I sat in one of the gaming chairs on the floor and adjusted my glasses as Gus turned on the gaming system. Soon the sounds of a computer-generated warzone filled the room. From the gaming chair next to mine, Gus was controlling Sergeant Max Mayhem, the hero of Counterinsurgence 2: The Price of Dawn, and I was controlling Private Jasper Jacks.

As I fired at my target, I said, "So what did you and Hazel do?"

"I brought her here–"

"You mean she didn't try to jump out of your moving vehicle when she realized how horrible your driving was?" I asked.

He laughed. "I think she might have momentarily thought about it, but my charm convinced her not to." And then Gus made Max Mayhem run into a burning building.

"What are you doing?" I asked. "We're supposed to be flanking left!"

"There are people in here. I can save them!"

"That's not what we're suppos–" It was too late, Gus had gotten Max killed, causing us to fail the mission. I'm not sure there was ever I time when we actually completed a mission thanks to Gus's need to defy the laws of the game and save people who were never meant to be saved.

I put my controller on the floor and said, "Back to Hazel. What happened when you got here."

"She met the parents," Gus said. "Then I showed her around my room."

"Showed her around, huh?" I nudged him with my elbow.

"It wasn't like that." He shoved my arm away from him. "We went upstairs and watched _V for Vendetta_, then I loaned her _The Price of Dawn_."

"Do you want her to like you, or do you want her to _turn into_ you?"

"I wanted to give her a reason to call me, and she promised to call me as soon as she finishes _The Price of Dawn_." His crooked smile showed that he was pleased with himself, and in that moment, everything was perfect.

It wasn't until the next day that my world began to crumble. I called Monica during her lunch break, and I could tell something was off. When she asked if she could come over after school, she sounded distant, as if she had been talking to someone else and my existence had interrupted their conversation. And when I said, "Always," her "Always" seemed less like a promise and more like a burden.

She came straight to my house after school. When I opened the door to let her in, I leaned in to kiss her, but she leaned away from me. It was then that I knew what was coming, but I didn't want to believe it. "Always," I said.

All she said was, "Can we go to your room?"

When we went into my room I was going to sit on the bed, but that bed was sacred ground for Monica and me. I knew what was coming, and I didn't want the memory of this to coincide with other memories of Monica that had been made on that bed. "Always," I said again.

"Isaac," she said, "we need to talk."

"No." I shook my head so quickly that my glasses slid down my nose. "You promised me always."

"I know I did… but that was before…"

"Before what?" I asked. "Before you knew that my cancer would leave me eyeless? You promised me always. Always doesn't have any loopholes."

"I'm a teenager. I make a lot of promises I can't keep." She took a step toward the door. "Look, you being blind is just not something I'm prepared for. I can't handle it. This is it, all right? There is no more 'always.' Goodbye, Isaac."

I listened to the sound of her footsteps on the hardwood floor. I listened to slight creaking of the front door as she opened and shut it. I listened to the engine of her car revving to life and humming as it drove away. And that was it. She was gone, and she hadn't just broken a promise. She had broken me.

I didn't even think. I just grabbed my keys and bolted out the door.


	3. Chapter 3

As I drove around, I didn't pay attention to what I was passing or where I was going. My only destination was to get away from the pain, but this was impossible. I could have driven to the other side of the country, and it would've followed me.

My phone beeped, and I nearly drove onto the sidewalk trying to pull it out of my pocket. I was sure it was Monica texting me to say that she had realized the error of her ways, that she still loved me.

My heart sank into my stomach when I saw that the text was from Gus. It said:

Support Group Hazel called me last night.

I should've been happy for him, but I wasn't capable of expressing happiness at that time. I pulled into the nearest parking lot and texted back:

Monica broke up with me...

Not even a minute passed before my phone beeped again.

If you're joking, that's not funny.

With everything in me, I wished that it was a joke. Instead of texting him back, I put my car in drive and drove straight to his house.

When I showed up at Gus's door, he said, "You're kidding right? Isaac, tell me you're kidding."

I pushed past him and showed myself to his basement. Max Mayhem was paused on the screen. I grabbed the controller and resumed playing the game from where Augustus had abandoned it.

"This isn't a joke is it?" Gus asked. "She really broke up with you?"

Since boys are conditioned, from a very young age, to not exhibit specific emotions, explicitly sadness, I was trying to maintain composure. I wanted to convince myself that a little breakup didn't affect me. But this wasn't a _little_ breakup. I loved Monica. I was convinced that she would be leading my blind ass around when I was a decrepit old man. She had promised me always, and as naïve as it may have been, I believed her.

"Isaac, talk to me," Gus said.

And that's when I could hold it in no longer. The pain that I had tried to repress came bursting out of me faster than the bullets could be ejected from Max Mayhem's gun. I killed insurgents and rescued hostages and cried. It was a quiet cry at first, quiet enough that Gus was able to pretend he didn't notice, but I found no relief in crying. The pain just kept multiplying, and I could no longer control myself. Like a fool, I was sobbing hysterically.

Augustus's phone rang. He grabbed it and looked at the screen. It rang again, and he looked at me, struggling with whether or not it was appropriate to answer a phone call when you have a frantic friend in your bedroom. Looking rather guilt-ridden, he answered the phone on the third ring and said, "Hazel Grace."

I couldn't hear her response over the sound of my own wailing, but she must have asked him if he was all right because he said, "I'm grand. I am, however, with Isaac, who seems to be decompensating." Gus pulled the phone away from his ear and said, "Dude. Dude. Does Support Group Hazel make this better or worse? Isaac. Focus. On. Me."

I was convinced that nothing could make anything better ever again, but there was something about Hazel that made things _easier_, like the Support Group. I nodded my head, and, being the best friend Gus was, he understood the meaning of my nod.

He put the phone back to his ear and said, "Can you meet us at my house in, say, twenty minutes?"

While we waited for Hazel, Gus pried the controller from my hands and switched the game to two-player. The screen split, me on the left, Gus on the right. He didn't try to ask my anymore questions. We attempted the mission with the sound of my sobbing to keep us company.

It wasn't long before Gus said, "Hazel Grace." He must have heard her footsteps, which I wasn't capable of because my misery impacted my ability to hear. "Isaac, Hazel from Support Group is coming downstairs. Hazel, a gentle reminder: Isaac is in the midst of a psychotic episode."

I didn't even look in her direction; I just stared at the screen hoping that she wouldn't be able to see my tear-streaked face.

"How are you, Hazel?" Augustus asked.

"I'm okay," she said. "Isaac?"

I didn't respond to her. I couldn't. I hadn't spoken a word since Monica walked away from me. It was as if my ability to speak had broken when my heart did.

"You look nice," Gus said to Hazel. "Girls think they're only allowed to wear dresses on formal occasions, but I like a woman who says, you know, _I'm going over to see a boy whose connection to the sense of sight itself is tenuous, and gosh dang it, I am going to wear a dress for him._"

I darted my sight-bearing eye in her direction for a fraction of a second to see that she was wearing a dress that just barely covered her knees, but she didn't see me look at her.

"And yet," she said, "Isaac won't so much as glance over at me. Too in love with Monica, I suppose."

Hearing her name was like being stabbed with a dull knife. Any control I'd regained was thrown out the window. The noises that came from my mouth were akin to those of a dying animal.

"Bit of a touchy subject," Augustus explained. "Isaac, I don't know about you, but I have the vague sense that we are being outflanked." He redirected his thoughts to Hazel and said, "Isaac and Monica are no longer a going concern, but he doesn't want to talk about it. He just wants to cry and play Counterinsurgence 2: The Price of Dawn."

"Fair enough," Hazel said.

"Isaac," Gus said, "I feel a growing concern about our position. If you agree, head over to that power station, and I'll cover you."

I directed my character to the building while Gus used a machine gun to cover me.

"Anyway," Gus said to Hazel, "it doesn't hurt to _talk_ to him. If you have any sage words of feminine advice."

I saw a soldier stick his head up next to a battered truck, so I fired several times, ending his life while Hazel said, "I actually think his response is appropriate."

"Pain demands to be felt," Augustus said, and in that moment, I could not have agreed with him more. It didn't just demand to be felt, it demanded to torture.

"You're sure there's no one behind us?" he asked. I wasn't sure about _anything_, and that was evident when the bullets rained down on us. "Oh goddamn it, Isaac," he said. "I don't mean to criticize you in your moment of great weakness, but you've allowed us to be outflanked, and now there's nothing between the terrorists and the school."

I darted down an alley as Hazel said, "You could go over the bridge and circle back."

Augustus sighed. "Sadly, the bridge is already under insurgent control due to questionable strategizing by my bereft cohort."

And that was it. That was my breaking point. Monica had already stomped me into the ground. I wasn't going to let Augustus bury me there. "Me? Me?! You're the one who suggested we hole up in the freaking power station."

From the corner of my good eye, I could see Gus flashing a smile. "I knew you could talk, buddy," he said. "Now let's go save some fictional schoolchildren."

Both Gus and I directed our characters down an alley, forging our way to the schoolhouse. We used a short wall across the street as cover so we could take down the enemies surrounding it.

"Why do they want to get into the school?" Hazel asked.

"They want the kids as hostages," Augustus said. More terrorists appeared all around the schoolhouse. "Get it get it get it." I saw the flash of dark green fly through the air. "Grenade! Grenade!" Augustus shouted as it landed next to the door of the school."

I dropped my controller and sighed. "If the bastards can't take hostages, they just kill them and claim we did it."

Augustus jumped over the wall and said, "Cover me!" as he raced toward the school. I clumsily grabbed the controller and tried to ward off as many enemies as I could. He was shot once, and then twice, but he didn't stop running. "YOU CAN'T KILL MAX MAYHEM!" Augustus shouted as he dove on top of the grenade. The body of Max Mayhem exploded in a thousand different directions and the screen turned blood red as the words, "MISSION FAILURE" emitted from the speakers.

Pleased with himself, Augustus reached into his pocket, pulled out one of his cigarettes, and shoved it between his teeth. "Saved the kids," he said.

"Temporarily," Hazel reminded him. She was unaware of Augustus's eternal need to be a hero.

"All salvation is temporary," Gus retorted. "I bought them a minute. Maybe that's the minute that buys them an hour, which is the hour that buys them a year. No one's gonna buy them forever, Hazel Grace, but my life bought them a minute. And that's not nothing."

"Whoa, okay," she said. "We're just talking about pixels."

Out of nowhere, the sadness hit me again. I was sure it would never go away, convinced I would spend the rest of my life bursting into tears at random.

"Another go at the mission, corporal?" Augustus asked.

But this time I shook my head no. Playing a videogame was doing absolutely nothing to help me. I didn't want to talk about it, I didn't even want to think about it, but I was never going to get rid of this relentless pain if I didn't. My voice struggled as I said, "She didn't want to do it after."

"She didn't want to dump a blind guy," Hazel said.

The tears still flowing like a waterfall, I nodded my head. I wondered how long Monica's "Always" had been an empty promise. "She said she couldn't handle it. I'm about to lose my eyesight and _she_ can't handle it." The absurdity of this was enough to entice feelings of anger, and the tears began to relent.

"I'm sorry," Hazel said.

I used my sleeve to wipe my face. "It's unacceptable. It's totally unacceptable."

"Well, to be fair, Hazel said, "I mean, she probably _can't_ handle it. Neither can you, but she doesn't _have _to handle it. And you do."

I refused to accept that. "I kept saying 'always' to her today, 'always always always,' and she just kept talking over me and not saying it back. It was like I was already gone, you know? 'Always' was a promise! How can you just break a promise?"

"Sometimes people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them," she said.

I was beginning to get annoyed with Support Group Hazel for defending Monica. "Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway. Don't you believe in true love?" She didn't answer me. "Well, I believe in true love," I said. "And I love her. And she promised. She _promise me always_." I stood from the gaming chair and took a step toward Hazel. The anger had settled in now; it had completely replaced the hurt. All I could feel was rage. I spun around, not even knowing which way was up or down, right or left.

"Isaac," Gus said.

"What?" I asked.

"You look a little… Pardon the double entendre, my friend, but there's something a little worrisome in your eyes.

The rage was swelling within me. I pictured myself exploding into a thousand different directions, an eruption of red, "MISSION FAILURE" blasting through the basement. That's when I lost all control. I kicked the gaming chair over and over, with increasing force, until it flipped backward.

"Here we go," Augustus said.

I went after the chair and kicked it again. She had no right. No right to make promises she had no intention of keeping.

"Yes," Augustus said. "Get it. Kick the shit out of that chair!"

I kicked the chair so hard I was sure I had broken a couple of toes, but I wasn't done. Not even close. It was so easy for her. What we had was worth fighting for, but she threw it away because she couldn't _handle it_. I grabbed one of the pillows from Gus's bed and repeatedly slammed it against the wall.

With a cigarette still in his mouth, Gus decided that this was an appropriate time to strike up a conversation with Hazel. They were talking about a book. I overheard something about Amsterdam and a Dutch Tulip Man, but I wasn't exactly listening.

They were quiet for a moment, then Augustus clapped his hands over my shoulders and said, "Dude, pillows don't break. Try something that breaks."

The first thing I saw was a basketball trophy. I grabbed it and held it over my head, ready to slam it to the ground, but I stopped. I couldn't just destroy Gus's hard-earned award.

"Yes," Augustus said. "Yes!"

If I had even a bit of sanity, I might have ignored him. But in the state I was in, that was all the permission I needed. I smashed the trophy against the floor, but only the plastic arm came off. I wasn't satisfied with this, so I stomped the trophy until pieces of plastic basketball player were scattered around the room.

"Yes!" Gus said. "Get it!"

I was going to lose my ability to drive and read and see, but knowing that Monica was going to complete that journey with me somehow made it all a little less terrifying. And she had the nerve to abandon me when I needed her the most. I grabbed another trophy, and then another, all of them succumbing to my rage.

"I've been looking for a way to tell my father that I actually sort of hate basketball, and I think we've found it," Gus said to Hazel.

I had heard the story of Augustus's basketball career before. He was too humble to admit it, but he was exceptional. The problem was, Augustus had a tendency to ponder the meaning of _everything_. This led him to sabotage his own love of the game because he reduced basketball to "tossing a spherical object through a toroidal object," and, for Gus, if there was no deeper meaning, there was no point. And in my fit of hysteria, I was more than happy to help him dispose of trophies that were now pointless to him.

Hazel and Augustus stood back and watched as I destroyed those tiny plastic men and their miniscule basketballs. As I massacred each and every one of his trophies, I screamed so loud I swear the walls shook. And when I was done, I could barely breathe. My face was hot and my shirt was drenched. I didn't even attempt to move; I simply dropped to me knees atop the carnage.

"Feel better?" Augustus asked.

"No," I said through a heavy breath.

"That's the thing about pain," he said. "It demands to be felt."


	4. Chapter 4

For the next week, Augustus spent most of his time reading a book called _An Imperial Affliction_. I'd seen him read before, but never as intently as he read that book. I swear he had glued the thing to his hands. Even Max Mayhem couldn't persuade him to put it down.

When I finally asked him about it, I learned that it was about a teenage girl named Anna. Even though this girl had cancer, she started a foundation to aid in the curing of Cholera. Apparently she had a mom with a glass eye, and her mom falls in love with a Dutch Tulip Man who had a lot of money. And apparently Gus assumed that I was never going to read it because he spoiled the whole damn book by telling me that it ends in the middle of a sentence.

I called him on Sunday and said, "The only eye I have will be gone in a matter of days. Let's do something epic. Let's go skydiving!"

There was a tapping of a keyboard in the background. "Yeah Dude. Come on over – An assistant! HE HAS AN ASSISTANT!"

"WHY ARE YOU YELLING?"

"Van Houten has an assistant!"

"Who the hell is Van Houten?"

"Just get your ass over here."

"On my way." And I hung up.

Mrs. Waters let me in, and I showed myself to the basement. I found Gus sitting on his bed with the book next to him and his laptop in front of him. He didn't even notice me standing at the foot of the stairs. He was too busy typing so fast I thought the keys would disintegrate.

"Did you forget about an essay or something?" I asked him.

He continued to stare at the screen and type as he said, "This email has to be perfect. I've got one chance, and I'm going to get her the answers she deserves."

"If you think you're making sense, I'm here to let you know that you're not."

"Hazel Grace," he said. "She's been writing to the author of _An Imperial Affliction_. He never writes her back, but I found his assistant's email address, and I'm going to see to it that Van Houten contacts her."

"You really like her, don't you?" I asked.

"I do," he said. "She's everything I could ever hope to be. She doesn't care what people think about her. She doesn't worry about how much time she has left on this earth. The only thing she questions is this book, and I'm going to help her get the answers she desires."

I didn't doubt it, not even for a second. If it was possible, Augustus Waters could make it happen. I had no hope for my own love life, so I reassigned it all to Augustus's.

"It's sent." He closed his laptop. "Now, let's go find you a plane to jump out of."

(Being that neither of us had sufficient funds or connections to acquire an airplane and parachutes, we ended up seeing a movie that featured a skydiving scene.)

The next day, Augustus called to tell me that he had received a lengthy reply from Peter Van Houten, author of _An Imperial_ _Affliction_, and that he and Hazel had talked on the phone until well after midnight. And then he said, "Isaac, I said something to her last night, and I don't want you to get mad when I tell you what I said."

"All right," I said. "I won't."

"I said 'okay,' and then she said, 'okay,' then I said it again and she said it again–"

"You thought I'd be mad that both of you have a weird obsession with the word 'okay?'" I asked.

"No I thought you'd be mad that I said, 'Maybe _okay_ will be our _always_.'"

There was a long moment in which neither of us said anything. Part of me wanted to be mad, but "always" didn't belong to me. It _never_did. I had to accept that.

Finally I said, "Did you mean it? Augustus Waters, if you're gonna say something like that you better mean it with every fiber of your being."

"I meant it," he said.

"What did she say back?" I asked.

"She said, 'Okay.'"

I liked her answer. I liked the thought of Augustus and Hazel being a couple. I liked that they had bonded over a book. I liked that their connection wasn't rooted in their mutual afflictions. It was then that I realized I was glad I had been too distracted to save him from Hazel. I had been so concerned with how much time she had left, but I should've realized that she had time left to give him. That's all that mattered.

My family and I had known for a quite a while that I was going to lose my vision, and if they could have, they would've ensured I saw everything the world had to offer. Unfortunately, having a kid with cancer isn't exactly cheap. They were still paying the bill for my last eye-removal surgery, so they didn't have a lot of money to spare. But they saved up enough to turn the day before my surgery into The Day Isaac Would See Everything Indianapolis Had To Offer.

I appreciated their efforts, but I spent most of the day plagued by hope that Monica would call me. I didn't expect her to profess her love for me, but it would've been nice to hear from her. She knew I would be going to the hospital that night, and that I would never see again. I thought maybe she cared enough to at least extend her condolences, but I never heard from her. Not even a measly text.

After the adventures were over and the sun had hidden on the other side of the earth, all I had left to do was wait. It was my last night with vision, so I didn't even consider going to sleep. I was going to see everything I possibly could. I watched T.V. for a bit, but that felt like a waste of sight, so I started walking around the house. I stood in each room trying to remember each and every detail. I went into the bathroom, filled the tub with water, and tried to capture the memory of water. As I walked down the hall, I looked at the pictures hung on the wall. This is where I spent the rest of the night. I studied the faces of my family: my mom, my dad, my little brother. I wanted to remember them most of all.

The sound of my mom's alarm came far too quickly. She found me standing in the hall, staring at the pictures and said, "I'm so sorry, Isaac, but we have to get ready to go."

Since my dad had to work and my brother had school, the task of overseeing my surgery attendance had fallen on my mom. My predicament was a burden to her, but she would never openly admit that. So after I said goodbye to my dad and brother, my mom and I left for the hospital.

I had planned to spend the car ride to the hospital watching everything we passed, but it was 5 a.m., and Indianapolis was still consumed with darkness. And even if it hadn't been, I spent the ride in tears, mourning the impending loss of my vision. I just kept reminding myself that the surgery had to be done. They had to remove my eye to get rid of the cancer.

Being prepped for the surgery was a sort of blur of nurses and doctors and beds and needles. The last thing I actually remember seeing clearly was still at my house; a specific picture of my family, one that was taken of the four of us from our vacation the previous year. And I was happy with that. It was the perfect last sight.

When I woke up, I was groggy, in pain, and confused. In trying to prepare myself for the moment I would wake up blind, I had imagined I would be shrouded in darkness, but instead there was this sort of perpetual nothingness. Other than the beeping of my heart monitor, the room was quiet. I called out for my mom.

"I'm here," she said. Her voice was soft, and I could picture the words leaving her mouth. "I'm right here. Augustus is here too."

"Hey, dude," he said. "You know, those bandages really suit you."

"See, Monica doesn't know what she's missing." I slowly rubbed my hand across the bandages wrapped around my head. "Tell me, am I NEC?" I asked.

"Officially no evidence of cancer, honey," my mom answered. I could feel her place her hand on top of mine.

"Has Monica called?"

My mom stoked the back of my hand and said, "We haven't heard anything from her…"

This hurt more than losing my eye ever could. I had given more than a year of my life to her. I had given _everything_ to her. And all of that meant nothing. She hadn't even bothered to see if I had survived my surgery.

After that, all I wanted to do was sleep. I didn't wake up until a nurse came in to change my bandages. "Has a girl named Monica come by?" I asked her.

"Aside from your mom, only your friend Augustus has been here."

"Where are they?" I asked.

"Your friend left earlier, and your mom left about half an hour ago. Said she was going to pick up your brother." She went on to explain that she was positioning the clean gauze when I heard the door opening. "Come in," she said.

"Hey, Isaac."

The voice sounded familiar. My hopes soared. "Mon?" I thought maybe she had cared enough to come visit me after all.

"Oh, no. Sorry. No, it's, um, Hazel. Um, Support Group Hazel? Night-of-the-broken-trophies Hazel?"

"Oh." I should've tried harder to sound less disappointed. "Yeah, people keep saying my other senses will compensate, but CLEARLY NOT YET. Hi, Support Group Hazel. Come over here so I can examine your face with my hands and see deeper into your soul than a sighted person ever could."

"He's kidding," the nurse said.

"Yes," Hazel said. "I realize."

There was a scraping on the floor, and then someone grabbed my hand. I thought it was the nurse, but then Hazel said, "Hey."

"Hey," I said. Up to this point, I hadn't considered myself to be particularly close to Hazel, but she had cared enough to come see me. She didn't come because Gus was coming. She had come on her own. That was when I realized that we were friends.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Okay," I said. "I don't know."

"You don't know what?" she asked.

"She hasn't even visited," I said. "I mean, we were together fourteen months. Fourteen months is a long time. God, that hurts." I let go of her hand and felt around for the pain pump. I wasn't trying to dull the pain of my wound so much as trying to dull the pain of heartache.

When the nurse finished with my bandages, she said, "It's only been a day, Isaac." There was a tone of condescension in her voice. "You've gotta give yourself time to heal. And fourteen months _isn't_ that long, not in the scheme of things. You're just getting started, buddy. You'll see."

I couldn't believe she had just said that. "Is she gone?" I asked.

"Yeah," Hazel said.

"I'll _see_? Really? Did she seriously say that?"

"Qualities of a Good Nurse: Go," she said.

"1. Doesn't pun on your disability," I said.

"2. Gets blood on the first try," Hazel said.

"Seriously, that is huge. I mean is this my freaking arm or a dartboard? 3. No condescending voice."

"How are you, sweetie?" Hazel asked jokingly. "I'm going to stick you with a needle now. There might be a little ouchie."

"Is my wittle fuffywump sickywicky?" I joked in return. "Most of them are good, actually. I just want the hell out of this place."

"This place as in the hospital?"

Nothingness. Pain. Heartbreak. "That, too," I said. "Honestly, I think a hell of a lot more about Monica than my eye. Is that crazy? That's crazy."

"It's a little crazy," she admitted.

"But I believe in true love, you know? I don't believe that everybody gets to keep their eyes or not get sick or whatever, but everybody _should_ have true love, and it should last at least as long as your life does."

"Yeah," Hazel said.

"I just wish the whole thing hadn't happened sometimes. The whole cancer thing." I could feel myself tiring. The medicine was starting to take effect.

"I'm sorry," Hazel said.

"Gus was here earlier. He was here when I woke up. Took off school. He…" My head drooped to the side. "It's better." Sleep was beckoning me.

"The pain?" Hazel asked.

I mustered all the strength I had left and nodded.

I heard her say the word, "Good," but it sounded distant, and then unconsciousness swept me away.

When I woke up again, it was my dad who was there with me. "Monica?" I asked.

"Still no word from her," Dad said apologetically. "Although you do have some yellow flowers here from – the card says, 'Support Group Hazel.'"

"Yeah, I talked to her earlier," I said. "I didn't know she brought flowers, though… She's just a friend."

A friend I was proud to have.

Augustus skipped school again the next day and showed up at the hospital. He burst through the door and shouted, "I have wonderful news!"

"I don't really want to hear wonderful news right now," I said.

"This is wonderful news you want to hear."

"Fine, what is it?" I asked him.

And he said, "You are going to live a good and long life filled with great and terriblr moments that you cannot even imagine yet!"

That was Augustus, always full of optimism and encouragement. His love of life was something I craved.

After spending most of the day watching me sleep and listening to me blubber about still not hearing anything from Monica, he said, "Hazel got an email from Van Houten. He said he would answer her questions if she ever visited Amsterdam."

"Wow," I said. "Is she going to get to go?"

"Well, her parents don't have a lot of money due to the high costs of keeping a person alive, and she already used her Wish. She went to Disney World. _Disney World_. Can you believe it?"

"So she won't get to go?"

"I didn't say that," Augustus said. "I have an idea."

"And just what might that be?" I asked.

I may not have been able to see him, but I just knew that he was flashing one of his crooked smiles. "I still have my Wish," he said with an air of utter triumph.

He spent the next few days corresponding with the Genies foundation and Hazel's parents. But as was the nature of Augustus Waters, the gesture of ensuring that Hazel got to go to Amsterdam was not grand enough. He spent a good part of his visits with me planning the execution of the reveal. There would be a picnic at which everything would be Dutch themed. The flowers he gave her, the location, the colors (lots of orange), the food, even the shirt he wore. That boy even wrote out a speech that he memorized for her.

Augustus Waters was something else. He had found a way to make the impossible possible.


	5. Chapter 5

When I was discharged from the hospital, my mom took me straight home. She wanted me to have at least one day at the house before my rehab began. She led me through the door. With my brother being at school and my dad being at work, the house was quiet. My mom asked if I wanted her to lead me around. I declined. I had already lost so much. I wasn't about to hand my independence over that easily.

Before the surgery, I had read up on ways I could use my other senses in the absence of my sight. I remembered one of them in particular, so I knelt down and removed my shoes, then my socks. I could feel the soft fibers of the carpet beneath my feet. I was able to picture the layout of the living room before me. Slowly, I made my way toward the kitchen, feeling for furniture as I passed. I misjudged the distance between the end table and myself, which resulted in a stubbed toe.

"Isaac, let me help you," my mom said.

"I've got this, mom," I said. "You can't spend the rest of your life leading me around the house."

I stepped to the right and continued on my path. Soon I could feel the coldness of tile beneath my feet. The sound of the refrigerator echoed in my left ear. With my hand extended, I followed the low humming until I reached the door. I pulled it open and allowed the cool air to escape around me.

Being blind certainly wasn't easy, but I was beginning to realize that I _could_ rely on my other senses to guide me. I quietly made my way around the house feeling with my feet and hands – carpet, tile, walls, door frames – and listening – the dripping faucet in the bathroom, the ceiling fan in my parents' bedroom. And I had the fortunate bonus of memory. The images of what I once could see blended with the sounds and textures to create a home that I could navigate relatively easily.

When I made my way back to the living room, my mom said, "Isaac, there's something I'd like to show, or, um, tell you about." She had been trying her hardest to avoid words that alluded to the necessity of sight.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Let's go to your room."

In my carpeted room, I stood at what I judged to be half way between my bed and my dresser. I heard the push of a button and then the sound of an electronic purring to life.

"What's that?" I asked.

Suddenly there was a deep voice filling the room. "Deception. One player or two?"

"Pause," my mom said. "It's a voice-activated computer. Now you can still play your video games!"

I didn't know what to say. All I could think was, _There's no way we can afford something like that._ My parents had already gotten me a voice-activated phone so that I could keep in touch with my friends, and there was no way they could afford that, let alone anything more. But I didn't ask her how she intended to pay for my growing number of voice-activated electronics. I didn't want to add to the ever-growing list of ways I was a burden to my family. Instead, I slid my feet across the floor in the direction of where her voice had been. "Thank you, mom," I said as I hugged her. "Thank you for everything."

I had just finished eating dinner when my phone said, "Augustus Waters is calling."

"Answer," I said, followed by, "What's up, dude?"

Gus: "You up for a visitor?"

Me: "If it's a beautiful girl with the hots for a blind guy, then sure."

Gus: "What if it's a seventeen-year-old boy with one leg and absolutely no salaciousness for a blind guy?"

Me: "I suppose I'll have to hide my disappointment."

Gus: "I'm terribly sorry to disappoint, but said boy with one leg will be at you house in five minutes."

I showed Augustus how to work my voice activated game and foolishly assumed that since it was _my_house and _my_game, he would play by the rules. I should've known that he wasn't capable of such a thing. He sabotaged mission after mission at the first sign of what he perceived to be a heroic opportunity.

Finally, I gave up on actually completing a mission, and said, "So when are you and Support Group Hazel going to make your relationship official?"

"We're not," Gus said.

"What? Dude, why not?"

I could hear him shuffling through his pocket, then a stifled groan escaped his mouth.

"You all right?" I asked.

"I'm grand," he said. "I think I must've hit my hip on something." This was followed by the sound of fingers tapping on a phone screen. "Her exact words were, 'When I try to look at you like that, all I see is what I'm going to put you through.'"

"But you're the reason she gets to go to Amsterdam!"

"Come on, man," Gus said. "How big of a prick do you think I am? I didn't use my Wish for her just to get her to date me. I used my Wish for her because I care about her, and I'm not going to stop caring about her just because she doesn't want to be in a relationship."

"But you used _your_Wish on her."

"I didn't use it _on_ her; I used it _for_ her. And she is in no way obligated to repay me in any way."

This is when I realized that Augustus was wasting his time trying to become an imaginary hero in a video game. He already was a hero. A tangible, indisputable hero. I should have told him this. I wish I had.

When my phone called out, "Augustus Waters is calling," my first instinct was to look at a clock. But then I remembered that wasn't possible anymore. All I knew was that it was sometime between midnight (when I fell asleep) and 8a.m. (when my phone was set to wake me up so I could prepare for my first day of rehabilitation), and that it was far too early for phone calls. "Augustus Waters is–"

"Ignore," I said, and my room was quiet again.

But less than a minute later, Augustus Waters was calling again.

"Answer." Agitation tainted my tired voice. "What the–"

"Something's wrong with Hazel Grace." Gus sounded unstable. "She's in the ICU at Children's."

"Oh my God." I was suddenly more awake than I had been in months. "Is she going to be okay?!"

"I don't know… Mr. Lancaster said she's in a lot of pain. They're running tests." I had never heard Augustus sound so stripped down. The charm in his voice was gone, replaced by pure terror.

When my Rehabilitation Doctor said that we could take a break for lunch, I told my phone to, "Call Augustus Waters."

When he answered I said, "How's Hazel doing?"

Gus: "She's still unconscious, but Mrs. Lancaster says that she's not in pain anymore, so that's good."

Me: "Are you at the hospital?"

Gus: "Been here since 5:15 this morning. They won't let me see her, though. Family only. I didn't know what to do, but I had to do something, so I'm writing a letter to Van Houten. That's the least I can do for her."

Me: "She'll like that. How long are you staying at the hospital?"

Gus: "I'm not leaving until I have to."

She had been unconscious for over a day when Augustus called me and said, "I have to tell you something, Isaac."

I said, "Oh God, is Hazel–?"

"She's still in ICU. Her lungs are drowning in fluid, but she's alive. I'm leaving the hospital now. Be at your house soon."

When he arrived, I was sure he'd been lying, certain he was going to tell me that Hazel had lost her battle. That was the news I had prepared myself for. I thought of how Patrick would have to add Hazel Lancaster to the end of that depression-inducing list of casualties. And of how I would have to find a way to comfort Augustus in the wake of her passing.

"Let's go for a ride," he said.

Riding with Augustus was a death wish waiting to be granted, but I was sure that Hazel was gone, so I was willing to oblige his request. He led me from my house to his SUV and opened the passenger's side door for me. I climbed in and felt around for the seatbelt, locking it into place.

He backed out of my driveway with enough speed to cause my chest for form to the belt. He drove too fast and braked too quickly. It was a miracle that no one slammed into the back of us.

Augustus remained quiet, so finally I said, "It's Hazel, isn't it?" I was not at all prepared for the news I was about to receive.

"Hazel Grace is currently suffering from a cancer-induced unconsciousness," Gus said. "Not exactly the best state to be in, but definitely not the worst…"

"If Hazel's still alive, what's wrong?" I asked.

"It seems I've had a recurrence," he said slowly, like he was afraid of the words that were leaving his mouth.

All I could think was, _Trust your senses_. I had spent the day in Person Newly Afflicted With Blindness Rehab, and I must have heard that a thousand times. _Trust your senses. Your other senses will help you learn to cope. Your other senses will compensate for what you've lost._They were wrong. My senses could not even begin to help me cope with this information. They could, in absolutely no way, compensate for what I had just lost. The certainty of my best friend's life was a certainty no more.

"I had some pain in my hip, so I went for a PET scan." The speed at which he was driving was increasing, as if he thought he might be able to drive away from what he was saying. "The cancer's back, and it's, well, everywhere. My chest, my hip, my liver. There was more of me alive with a cancerous glow than not."

"Please tell me this is some sort of sick joke you've concocted," I said.

"It's definitely a sick joke," he said. "Unfortunately, it's being told at my expense."

I couldn't even think straight. The SUV felt like an oven, and I was angry at the entire universe. Augustus Waters had already fought his battle, and he had won. He was supposed to live a good and long life with great and terrible moments just like I was. He was not supposed to be drafted into the war again. I thought I was an expert at the broken-heartedness of losing things, but the thought of losing Augustus was a new kind of torment.

I didn't want to cry in front of him; he had seen me cry far too many times. But the tears welled up around my glass eyes and spilled over my lashes. My best friend had cancer… again; that afforded me a few tears.

"You're going to fight it, right?" My voice squeaked like a twelve-year-old boy going through puberty.

"I'll be starting chemo to alleviate the pain for now," Gus said. "The real poison will come when we get back from Amsterdam."

I wiped my hands across my cheeks and said, "_Two cancer patients get on a plane to Amsterdam_… All that's missing is the punch line."

Augustus let out a quiet laugh.

"Do you honestly think you'll get to go?" I asked. "Doesn't seem like either of you are exactly fit for international travel."

"We'll get to go. She'll wake up…" Gus sounded far less certain of this fact than I wanted him to be.

Neither one of us said anything for a while. The silence gathered around us, waiting to be dispersed. He continued to drive. We must have been on the interstate because there was no more stopping, only increasing speed. And I was prepared to let him drive me across the country if that's what he desired.

It was Augustus who spoke first. "Did I tell you I saw Hazel Grace today?" I shook my head. "I snuck in behind a nurse. They're draining the fluid from her chest, and there's a machine breathing for her. It's awful seeing her like that, pale and vacant. And Isaac… The probability of going to Amsterdam is slim. If they can't get that menacing cancer water out of her lungs… I don't know if she'll wake up… but I want her to. God, I want her to."


	6. Chapter 6

Much to everyone's relief, Hazel did wake up. She was taking a drug called Phalanxifor, and it was causing her lungs to take on water. Stopping the Phalanxifor was not a viable option for her, so she would have to have her lungs drained every now and then and spend her nights hooked to a biPAP machine to force air in and out of her lungs while she slept. It wasn't an ideal situation for a sixteen-year-old girl, but she had no other choice if she wanted to continue to exist.

She spent six days in that ICU bed, and in that time, Augustus became well acquainted with the ICU waiting room. He wasn't allowed to see her, but he spent every free moment he had there.

My mom took me to visit him the day before Hazel was released. The chairs in the waiting room were the hard kind of plastic that no one wants to sit on and I could hear a t.v. playing one of those daytime talk shows that nobody wants to watch, but the air of an ICU waiting room would be far too quiet without it. It was rather depressing, but Augustus was there for her, so I was there for him.

He read me the letter that Van Houten had sent in reply to his. I never told Gus, but there was one part that stuck with me. An except from Van Houten's letter:

_Were she better or you sicker, then the stars would not be so terribly crossed, but it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he had Cassius note, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves." Easy enough to say when you're a Roman nobleman (or Shakespeare!), but there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars._

My first thought was, a_t least the stars aren't terribly crossed now._And I hated myself for thinking such a thing, but it was true. Augustus was sicker. He and Hazel were racing toward the finish line that neither of them had any desire to reach. The fault of the stars was no longer that Augustus would undoubtedly outlive Hazel. However, this didn't mean that the stars had aligned. There was no denying the fault in their stars. Death by cancer was a terrible fate that Hazel Lancaster and Augustus Waters had done absolutely nothing to deserve.

Hazel was released from the hospital the next day, and Augustus was finally able to see her, but he didn't tell her about his recurrence. He swore he didn't want to because there was still a possibility that they would go to Amsterdam, and he didn't want to ruin that for her. I'm sure that this was _part_ of his reasoning. However, I suspected that he also didn't want to ruin the trip for himself. Maybe he hadn't used his wish to get Hazel to date him, but that didn't mean he didn't _want_ to be in a relationship with Hazel. She had already allowed her own diagnosis to suppress her feelings for Augustus. He didn't want the added pressure of his diagnosis to scare her away once and for all.

So she went home believing two things: 1. With the help of Phalanxifor, she would continue to survive for an indefinite amount of time; 2. Augustus Waters was healthy. Only the former was true.

A couple of days later, one of Hazel's cancer doctors deemed that a trip to Amsterdam would not be advisable. According to Augustus, this upset Hazel a great deal, which of course meant that Augustus couldn't bring himself to break the news of his recurrence to her.

The next day, I called Augustus to see how he was handling the knowledge that he would be subjected to the wrath of chemo again soon. When he answered, I could hear The Hectic Glow playing in the background.

"Are you in your car?" I asked.

"As a matter of fact, I am," he said. "I'm going to see Hazel. The sky is depressing her, and there's a swing set that's making her cry."

I wondered if I'd gotten the days wrong and he was in the throes of some sort of chemo-induced hallucination. "Are you all right?"

"I'm grand," he said. "Hazel, however, is not at the moment. I'm pulling into her driveway. Can I call you back later?"

"Sure," I said.

When he called me back I asked, "How's Hazel?"

"She was having a bit of an existential crisis," he said, "so I helped her get rid of the swing set."

"She was in possession of a crisis-inducing swing set?" I asked.

"Apparently so." There was a long pause filled only with the sounds of our breathing. "I'm falling in love with her, Isaac. When I was with her today, I didn't care that my cancer had returned. The world was a perfect place again."

"The world has never been a perfect place, Gus…"

"It can be," he said. "Hazel Grace is the personification of perfection."

The day after the giving away of the swing set, Augustus called me to say, "I have good news and bad news."

"Start with the bad," I said.

"Today marks the beginning of a long battle."

This, I already knew. It was his first day of palliative chemo.

"You've beaten it once. You'll beat it again."

"We can only hope," he said, but didn't sound hopeful at all.

"And the good news?" I asked.

"It seems Hazel's predicament has been reevaluated. The trip is back on!"

"What about your predicament, Augustus? What about the chemo?"

"The chemo will keep me company until the trip," he said, "and it will be waiting for me when I return."

I will never understand why Augustus didn't consider himself to be a hero. He was willing to risk his own life to fulfill the dreams of the girl he loved. If this isn't a hero, I don't know what is.

Two days later, I was commanding my way through a Deception mission when my mom came into my room and said, "I just received a phone call from Augustus's mom. He's at Children's–"

"Is he okay?!"

"He's going to be fine, but they're keeping him over night. She said he was asking for you."

I didn't even bother to turn the game off. I walked to my mom and said, "Let's go."

My mom offered to buy Augustus's mom a coffee, so they left us in the room alone. The sound of his breathing was shallow and pain-filled.

"Dude, what happened?" I asked.

"I went to school today," Gus said.

"What the hell are you thinking?" I asked. "Your first round of chemo was two days ago!"

"Between your surgery, Hazel's stay in the hospital, and the chemo, I've been absent a lot. I thought I would be strong enough to handle it..."

"I think you're the only teenager on the face of the planet who actually _wants_ to go to school," I said.

"I only went because I didn't want people to start getting suspicious… Hazel Grace needs to find out from me, not from a Sorry You're Dying post on my wall."

"You did this for Hazel?" I asked.

"I wanted to. I _tried_ to. But I couldn't. I was barely there for two hours before the exhaustion took over, then the pain in my hip kicked in. So I gave myself a goal. I just kept thinking, _Lunchtime. You can make it to lunchtime._"

"You left before then?" I asked.

"I should have," he said. "Despite having eaten nothing, I wasn't hungry. I sat at the table with some of my old friends, but their food… I couldn't handle the smell. I didn't even have the strength to get up from the table. Someone brought a trashcan to me, but there was nothing for me to puke up. My hands were shaking so I clutched the side of the trashcan and dry-heaved for a solid five minutes."

"Holy shit, man."

"You know what the worst part was?" Gus asked. He didn't wait for me to answer. "Everyone in the cafeteria tried to pretend nothing was happening, that I wasn't coming apart at the seams before their eyes. No one asked me if I was okay or if they could do anything to help because they knew I wasn't and that they couldn't. The all just _knew._"

"They were bound to find out eventually," I said.

"They were supposed to find out from me, when I _wanted_ them to know." The exhaustion was evident in his weakened voice. "The chemo controls the cancer, the cancer controls me. What do I get to be in control of, Isaac?"

I didn't have an answer for him. His stars were faulty and there was nothing anyone could do to change that.


	7. Chapter 7

The day before Hazel and Augustus were scheduled to leave for Amsterdam, there was a Support Group meeting. I was learning to use my cane, but my mom, being the over-protective parent that she was, said, "You don't know your way around the church very well. Let me lead you in." I remembered enough about the church that I would've been able to make it just fine on my own, but I wasn't one to deny my mother's wishes. I wrapped my hand around her arm and let her lead the way.

We took the elevator down and stepped into the basement. I heard the wheels of her oxygen cart before she said, "Support Group Hazel not Monica."

She didn't have to tell me who she was; I had memorized her voice from when she visited me in the hospital. I smiled and said, "Hey, Hazel. How's it going?"

"Good. I've gotten _really_ hot since you went blind."

"I bet," I said as I tried to pull up the memory of what Hazel looked like. Thin, short hair, oxygen tank. These were the ways the cancer had shaped her appearance. I dug deeper. Bright green eyes, a pretty smile. Augustus was a lucky man.

My mom led me to one of the chairs, kissed the top of my head, and left. I stuck my hand out to feel the chair behind me. Falling on my ass in front of the Group wasn't on my list of things to do that day. I lined myself up appropriately then sat down.

"So how's it going?" Hazel said. Her voice was close. She was in the chair next to mine.

"Okay. Glad to be home, I guess. Gus told me you were in the ICU?"

"Yeah," she said.

"Sucks," I said.

"I'm a lot better now," she said. "I'm going to Amsterdam tomorrow with Gus."

"I know. I'm pretty well up-to-date on your life, because Gus never. Talks. About. Anything. Else."

Patrick cleared his throat and said, "If we could all take a seat?" There were feet shuffling around us as Patrick said, "Hazel! I'm so glad to see you!" She had been absent from Support Group for quite a while.

Patrick relayed the story of his battle with cancer that led to a life of ball-lessness, then introduced a new member of Support Group named Susan. After each new member I always hoped there would never be another, but there always was. And yet our group never seemed to expand because we lost just as many members as we gained.

As Patrick went around the circle, Hazel and I shared sighs as Lucas recounted her relapse and Ken talked of being in remission and Susan told us about her surgery. And then came Lida who said, "Hazel is such an amazing inspiration to me; she really is. She keeps fighting the battle, waking up every morning and going to war without complaint. She's so strong. She's so much stronger than I am. I just wish I had her strength."

Sometimes I wondered just how much Lida liked to hear herself talk. She certainly liked to have a sob story. If she didn't have one of her own, she would steal someone else's.

"Hazel?" Patrick asked. "How does that make you feel?" I knew instantly that he shouldn't have asked her that.

"I'll give you my strength if I can have you remission," Hazel said.

"I don't think that's what Lida meant," Patrick said. "I think she…" I tuned him out. I couldn't listen to him defending Lida. She didn't deserve to be defended when she had hi-jacked Hazel's story because she needed something interesting to share."

After everyone in the circle had been given a chance to speak, Patrick led the prayer, adding Michael to the list of those who were no longer among the living. Then he instructed us to join hands. Hazel took one of my hands and I held the other out to the boy next to me. All at once we said, "Living our best life today!"

I hadn't even stood up before I heard Lida attempting to apologize to Hazel. "No, no, it's really fine," Hazel said. "Care to accompany me upstairs?"

It took me a moment to realize that the question was directed at me. I placed my hand on her thin, cold arm, and we headed in what I assumed was the direction of the elevator. Then I heard my mom say, "I'm here."

I was hoping that my mom would be late today because I wanted to have a chance to talk to Hazel, to get to know her better. I had heard so much about her and yet I felt that I knew so little. I took my mom's arm and said, "You want to come over?"

"Sure," she said. There was a slight hesitation in her voice. Perhaps she thought I had intentions of trying to steal her from Gus, but that wasn't the case. Even if she hadn't realized it yet, she belonged with Augustus Waters. I had never even considered coming between them.

When we got to my house my mom went to make dinner, so I asked her if she wanted to play a video-game.

"Sure," she said. So I asked her to hand me the remote. Once I got everything set up, the deep voice came through the speakers. "Deception. One player or two?"

"Two," I said. And then I had a thought about Gus, and I thought maybe we could bond over our mutual fondness for him, so I said, "Pause." I turned toward where I estimated Hazel to be. "I play this game with Gus all the time, but it's infuriating because he is a completely suicidal video-game player. He's, like, way too aggressive about saving civilians and whatnot."

"Yeah," she said. I had hoped that she would say more than that.

Even with the humming computer and Hazel's ragged breathing, the room was too quiet, so I said, "Unpause."

"Player one, identify yourself."

"This is player one's sexy sexy voice," I said.

"Player two, identify yourself."

"I would be player two, I guess," Hazel said.

_Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem and Private Jasper Jacks awake in a dark, empty room approximately twelve square feet._

I pointed toward the TV hoping she would understand what she needed to do.

"Um," she said. "Is there a light switch?"

_No._

"Is there a door?"

_Private Jacks locates the door. It is locked._

"There's a key above the door frame," I said.

_Yes, there is._

"Mayhem opens the door."

_The darkness is still complete._

"Take out knife," I said.

"Take out knife," Hazel added.

I heard the footsteps of my brother bounding into the room. He imitated my voice shouting, "KILL MYSELF."

_Sergeant Mayhem places the knife to his neck. Are you sure you–_

"No," I said. "Pause. Graham, don't make me kick your ass."

I could hear him laughing as he made his way down the hall. After my surgery, Graham was the perfect angel. He did everything mom and dad asked, and he would oddly helpful to me. I absolutely hated this. Before the surgery, it was my brother's goal in life to annoy me in every possible way. He was only ten-years-old, so this was a very ambitious goal for him. When he started being nice to me, I was concerned that my surgery had changed him in some way. While I did appreciate the lack of torment, I wanted my little brother back. Fortunately, his well-behaved demeanor lasted for about a week, and then he was back, with new and improved ways to aggravate the hell out of me.

Hazel and I continued our game, navigating our way through caverns and facing enemies. For an hour, we didn't talk. We only played. Eventually we heard a prisoner crying out, "God, help me. God, help me."

"Pause," I said. "This is when Gus always insists on finding the prisoner, even though that keeps you from winning the game, and the only way to _actually free_ the prisoner is to win the game."

"Yeah, he takes video games to seriously," she said. "He's a bit too enamored with metaphor."

"Do you like him?" I asked.

"Of course I like him. He's great."

"But you don't want to hook up with him?"

"It's complicated," she said.

"I know what you're trying to do. You don't want to give him something he can't handle. You don't want him to Monica you." I wanted to be able to tell her that Gus was on the same sinking ship that she was, but it wasn't my place to say anything.

"Kinda," she said. "To be fair to Monica, what you did to her wasn't very nice either."

I couldn't believe Hazel Grace Lancaster was sitting in _my_house blaming _me_ for what Monica did. "What'd _I_do to her?"

"You know, going blind and everything."

"But that's not my fault," I said.

"I'm not saying it was your _fault_. I'm saying it wasn't nice."

She was implying that putting someone else through the pain of loving a person with cancer wasn't nice. But she wasn't being fair to herself. She didn't realize she was also implying that the cancer made her unworthy of love. She could not have been farther from the truth.


	8. Chapter 8

After my surgery I spent a great deal of time trying _not_ to be depressed. I didn't _want_ to be despondent or hopeless. I _wanted_to be someone who triumphed the hardships. I _wanted_ to believe that I would live and good _and_ long life with great_and_terrible moments. The problem was, I kept forgetting about the possibility of _good_ and _great_. All I could think was, _Long and terrible._

I tried not to wallow in self-pity at the hand I had been dealt, but there were still mornings when I would wake up expecting to open my eyes and see what was right in front of me. I hated those mornings. I hated that I was starting to forget things, like what made the color yellow different from the color orange, or how stars looked as they contrasted against the night sky.

On the days when I was feelings particularly dejected, I would normally call Augustus. He used to be able to remind me of all the great things that were waiting for me throughout the good life I was going to have. But, after learning of his diagnosis, he could no longer do this for me. It's not that he was incapable. It was that my problems paled in comparison to his. I had no right to complain about my fears for the distant future when Augustus Waters was unlikely to have a distant future to fear.

Of course, this didn't mean that I stopped calling him. He had accompanied me on my journey with cancer, and now it was my turn to accompany him. This was another of our unspoken agreements, one we hoped we would never have to uphold.

I kept thinking back to that part in the letter Van Houten had sent him, about how relevant it was, not to Hazel and Augustus, but to Augustus and me. We weren't lovers of course, but we were friends. The kind of friends money couldn't buy; the kind people spent their whole lives searching for. Were I sicker or he better, then our stars wouldn't have been so terribly crossed. There I was on the road that split and curved and winded and had no end in sight, and there Gus was on the road clearly marked _DEAD END AHEAD_. It wasn't fair, not in any way, shape, or form. Unfortunately, as Augustus would've said, the world is not a wish-granting factory.

I should've been happy for Augustus the day he and Hazel left for Amsterdam, but all I could think about was how he had promised he was going to tell Hazel of his recurrence. I'm fairly certain that I was more afraid of her reaction than Gus was. It was Hazel who was helping me to understand why Monica had abandoned me, and I was afraid that she would use that same reasoning to rationalize abandoning Augustus.

Since neither of us could afford the costs of international phone calls, I was anxiously awaiting an email update from Gus, but it had been a full day and I hadn't heard anything from him. I began to think the worst… maybe the flight had been too much for him. I could barely bring myself to say goodbye to him before he left for Amsterdam. I wasn't ready to say goodbye to him forever.

My mom found me sitting on my bed crying. She must have asked me what was wrong a thousand times before I was able to compose myself enough to realize that I didn't want to talk about Augustus, so I decided to bring up something else that had been weighing on my mind.

"Mom, how are you and dad affording all of these voice activate electronics?" I asked. "You have all the bills for my treatments, and surgeries, and doctor's appointments, and rehabilitation."

"Oh honey, you've been worrying about that?" she asked. "It's not your job to worry about bills. You have enough stress as it is. Your father and I will always find a way to provide for you and Graham."

"I know that, but all these extras for me… they're not_necessary_."

"It was your car," my mom said. "When we sold it, we put the money aside specifically for you."

"Why would you do that?" I was beginning to tear up again. "You should've put that money toward the bills."

"You had already lost so much," she said. "We wanted to give something back to you."

I broke down again. Between the sobs I said, "When is the _universe_ going to give something back to me?"

My mom wrapped her arm around my shoulders as she said, "What do you mean?"

"It just keeps taking and taking and taking." I was practically heaving. "My health, my sight, my independence, Monica… and now Gus."

"This is really about Augustus, isn't it?" she asked.

"I'm a terrible friend, mom. Augustus is riddled with cancer and I'm worried about what _I_ could lose."

"You're not a bad friend." She squeezed my shoulder. "Your sadness at the thought of losing him just proves how much you care about him."

I was a blubbering fool by this point. There was no hope of finding my voice to reply, so my mom said, "Augustus isn't dead, Isaac. I don't mean to be harsh, but Augustus will be receiving treatment when he returns. He's a fighter. And worrying about possibilities will neither increase nor decrease his chances of survival. The best thing you can do for _both_ of you is not let his cancer affect your friendship. Be the same amazing friend you were before his recurrence."

She was right. Crying hysterically wasn't going to save Augustus. There was absolutely nothing I could do to ensure the certainty of his life. The only thing I could do for him was be there for him just as he was there for me.

The next day, my mom announced that I had received an email from Augustus. She set me up with some headphones and commanded the computer to read the email to me.

The automated voice that in no way resembled Augustus's said, "Gus here. How are things _looking_ there in Indiana? We're planning on doing a bit of _sight-seeing_ later... I'm sorry, man. I just can't help myself sometimes.

We have arrived in the great city of Amsterdam! But first, the airplane. Have you ever flown in an airplane? If you have, a warning would've been nice because I nearly pissed myself on the take-off. And if you haven't flown in an airplane, mark that down on your bucket list right this instance.

Also, did you know that you age slower when you're moving faster? I looked it up when we got off the plane. It's called time dilation, which is part of the Theory of Relativity. You learn something new every day, huh?

What else? We watched _300_on the second flight. Spoiler alert, the Spartans kicked the Persians' asses. I mean, the Spartans ended up losing the war, so that's unfortunate, but they never surrendered, even when they knew there was no chance of winning.

And then Hazel Grace recited a poem for me and I am going to recite it for you.

When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table. / Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, / The muttering retreats / Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels / And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: / Streets that follow like a tedious argument / Of insidious intent / To lead you to an overwhelming question… / Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" / Let us go and make our visit.

Why am I reciting a poem to you, you may ask? Because this is what Hazel Grace recited right before I told her… not about the cancer… Isaac, I told her that I love her. I told her that I am in love with her, and that I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor is returned to dust, and that I know the sun will swallow the earth… I know all of these things, Isaac, and I know, without a doubt, that I am in love with Hazel Grace Lancaster, and she didn't say it back. But she will, Isaac. I know she will."


	9. Chapter 9

After my surgery, I became a bit of a recluse. I would attend my rehab sessions in the hopes of regaining some of my independence, but being taught how to be a blind person by people who had never been blind felt belittling. I would've much rather stayed home. Between my mom and dad, I was constantly being asked if I wanted to go somewhere. "I'll take you anywhere you want to go," my mom would often plead. The problem was I didn't want to be _taken_ anywhere. I wanted to hop in my car (that I no longer had) and drive (which I was no longer capable of doing), and that depressed the hell out of me. So I spent a lot of time in my room playing video games.

To keep my parents from going through with their offers to set me up an appointment with another therapist, I would often ask to be taken to Gus's house. At least there, they could leave me. It was a win-win situation. I was out of the house and my parents weren't hovering over me. However, with Augustus in Amsterdam, the only place I wanted to be was home, where the obstacles were few and familiar.

After playing Deception for three straight hours, I was sure my mom was one level away from checking either me or herself into the nearest psych ward, so I turn off the game and decided to check my email. I secretly still hoped that I would receive a message from Monica, but there was only one, and it was from Augustus.

"Hey, dude. It's Gus again.

There's an abundance of life here in Amsterdam. Even the trees come alive with the wind. They leave their marks by covering the streets and canals with their petal-like seeds in their desperate attempts to repopulate the earth with even more elm trees. I envy those trees and their ease of existing.

Enough of that… Do you have a bucket list? If you don't I'm making you one. 1. Fly in an airplane. 2. Drink champagne. In the words of our waiter, 'We have bottled all the stars this evening.' I want you to promise me that you will taste the stars at some point in your life.

Which brings me to the dinner we had last night. Everything was perfect, the sights and sounds and tastes and Hazel Grace. But then, while we were eating this woman shouted to us. She said, 'The beautiful couple is beautiful.'

The day I met Hazel Grace she told introduced me to the term _hamartia_, which is a fatal flaw. All I could think at that moment was, _Can something be beautiful if it has a hamartia?_ I don't have an answer to that question.

And now for today… The first part of the day was disastrous. We met Van Houten, and he was nothing more than a drunken asshole. He had not the slightest idea of our arrival. I'm not even sure the man knows his own name. He was an absolute deplorable excuse of a human being. He refused to give us any answers. Instead, he proceeded to ramble on incoherently about a tortoise. A damn tortoise. This was my one chance to be Hazel Grace's hero. I thought maybe she would forgive me for having cancer if she received insight of _An Imperial Affliction_, and now I have nothing to offer her except my love and the improbability of my existence. And none of this matters so much as the look on Hazel Grace's face. She was utterly defeated, and if I never see that pained expression on her face again, it will be too soon.

Van Houten's assistant, out of sheer embarrassment, offered to take us to the Anne Frank House. There were stairs. A lot of stairs. I swear I could feel the cancer multiplying as I exerted myself. And yet this was only a glimpse of what Hazel Grace must endure every day. She is so strong, Isaac. She is strong enough to handle the news, but I'm not sure that I am strong enough to deliver the blow. The entire day I kept telling myself that I had to tell her, but instead, I let her believe that I was the healthy one. And because of this, she kissed me, right there in the Anne Frank House. It was amazing, and I am honored that she was willing to let go of her fear of being a grenade for me.

I swore to myself that I would tell her when we returned to the hotel, but that is not what happened, Isaac. Not only did I not tell her. I lied to her. I literally told her, "All is well." It's not fair to her. I understand that. But now I also understand her fear of being a grenade. The last thing I want to do is cause her pain.

And maybe it was selfish of me, but I wanted to give her one last day of believing that I was okay. So I told her all was well, and maybe that was wrong of me because she might not have accompanied me to my room. I might have never gotten to hear her say, 'I love you, Augustus Waters.' Knowing that Hazel Grace Lancaster is in love with me makes up for every bad thing that has ever happened."

I wanted to be mad at Augustus for not telling her, but I couldn't be. I was too damn happy for him. He and Hazel were perfect for each other, even if the universe didn't seem to agree. For all the unhappiness Augustus had to suffer through, he deserved this moment of happiness. Especially since there was no guarantee as to the number of happy moments he would have left.

The next day, I had another message from Augustus in my inbox. When I ordered my computer to read it to me the robotic voice said:

"I told her, Isaac. I told her I would fight, and she said she was going to ride this roller coaster with me. I don't deserve someone like Hazel Grace. I am beyond privileged to have her."

My respect for Hazel grew immensely. The defender of Monica the Abandoner had not abandoned Augustus. She understood that love was keeping the promise anyway. Now if only Augustus had understood that his cancer did not leave him undeserving of her love.


	10. Chapter 10

The day after Augustus and Hazel returned from Amsterdam, my mom drove me to Augustus's house. I could hear the door opening and his dad said, "Isaac, long time, no–" I could practically hear him putting his foot in his mouth as my mom's arm tensed around mine.

"It's okay, Mr. Waters. You can say the word 'see.' I won't spontaneously combust or anything."

"Don't be rude, Isaac," my mom said.

"No, no. That wasn't rude," Mr. Waters said. "Please, come in."

"Watch your step," my mom said as she led me through the door.

Through my shoes, I could feel the texture of the floor changing from carpet-soft to tile-hard and then I heard her voice. "Isaac, hi, it's Hazel from Support Group, not your evil ex-girlfriend." My mom led me in the direction of her voice. I heard the sound of a chair sliding, then she wrapped her arms around me. I knew it was Hazel because I could feel her cannula pressed between us. I let go of my mom and put my arms around Hazel's back, hugging her tightly.

This is when I realized that I _wasn't_ going through this alone as I thought I was. Sure my parents understood what it was like to fear for the life of their child, but they didn't understand what it was like to fear losing a friend like Augustus. Hazel understood this. We were bonding over the failing health of our mutual friend. This is possibly the worst way to bond, but I was glad to have her.

"How was Amsterdam?" I asked.

"Awesome," Hazel said.

"Waters," I said. "Where are ya, bro?"

"He's napping," Hazel said. Sadness filled her voice.

I shook my head and said, "Sucks."

My mom grabbed my arm and led me to a chair. As I sat down I heard Augustus say, "I can still dominate your blind ass at Counterinsurgence." I could hear the effects of the chemo in his voice.

"I'm pretty sure all asses are blind," I said as I reached for my mom. She helped me up and led me back to the living room with the carpeted floor. At this point, I never had to tell her where I wanted to be led. She just knew. We were a team that way.

I gave Augustus an awkward hug, the ways guys do when they want to make sure everyone understands that they're just friends, then I said, "How are you feeling?"

"Everything tastes like pennies. Aside from that, I'm on a roller coaster that only goes up, kid."

Finally accepting that I would never understand Gus's fascination with an ever-inclining roller coaster, I laughed, and he said, "How are the eyes?"

"Oh, excellent," he said. "I mean, they're not in my head is the only problem." I actually found this quite unsettling. Part of me had been removed. My eyes had already ceased to exist. They were dead and gone before I was. I wondered if Gus ever felt the same way about his leg after it was removed.

"Awesome, yeah," Gus said. "Not to one-up you or anything, but my body is made out of cancer."

I tried to accept this for the joke it was, but I was very near the point of crying when I said, "So I heard." I reached out, trying to find his hand, but I grabbed a handful of his thigh instead.

"I'm taken," Gus said, which made me laugh enough that I could swallow my tears.

My mom brought over some chairs for Hazel and I to sit next to Augustus, then all the adults went downstairs. We just sat there quietly. All of our breathing mingled together, my healthy breaths, Hazel's struggling breaths, and Augustus's pain-filled breaths. I thought maybe he had fallen asleep again. Chemo-induced exhaustion was notorious for taking over a cancer patient's life. But then, after a while, Gus said, "How's Monica?"

"Haven't heard from her once," I said. "No cards; no emails. I got this machine that reads me my emails. It's awesome. I can change the voice's gender or accent or whatever."

"So I can like send you a porn story and you can have an old German man read it to you?"

"Exactly," I said. "Although Mom still has to help me with it, so maybe hold off on the German porno for a week or two."

"She hasn't even, like, texted you to ask how you're doing?" Hazel asked. She sounded dumfounded, like she could understand why Monica hadn't wanted to be with me, but not how Monica could just stop caring about me so easily.

"Total radio silence," I said.

"Ridiculous," Hazel said.

"I've stopped thinking about it. I don't have time to have a girlfriend. I have like a full-time job Learning How to Be Blind."

Augustus was quiet again after that, so I asked Hazel how she was doing, and she said she was good, and I told her about this new girl that had joined Support Group. She had this really hot voice, and I needed Hazel to help me determine if her voice was indicative of her appearance.

Augustus interrupted us to say, "You can't just not contact your former boyfriend after his eyes get cut out of his freaking head."

"Just one of–" I started, but Gus cut me off saying, "Hazel Grace, do you have four dollars?"

"Um," she said. "Yes?"

"Excellent. You'll find my leg under the coffee table," Gus said. There was so much mischief in his voice that it almost masked the exhaustion. I could hear him moving on the couch and wanted to tell him to lie back down, but Augustus already had a plan in his head, and I knew that there would be no stopping him.

Hazel offered me her arm, guided me out of the house, and to the backseat of her car. I knew Hazel was driving because the ride lacked the random accelerations and quick stops that were standard for a car driven by Augustus.

We stopped at a grocery store, where Gus and I waited in the car. I was glad because I didn't want to imagine the stares we would've attracted. I couldn't see Augustus, but I just knew that his skin was pale and dry, and if that didn't give it away, his limp would have. Add in Hazel with her oxygen tank and me with my blindness and we practically would've been forcing the patrons to tour the local Children's Hospital. Even though we weren't actually in that grocery store together, I couldn't stop envisioning the pity-filled eyes that were falling on us. Or the backs of the people who turned around so they wouldn't have to accept the fact that there are sick kids in the world. Or the people who were using us to remind themselves that life could be worse. I didn't want to be someone's version of a worse life.

When Hazel returned, Augustus instructed me to guide them to Monica's house. I hated admitting that I could still give directions to and from her house with ease. I hadn't even managed to forget a single street name.

As Hazel was coming to a stop I asked, "Is it there?"

"Oh, it's there," Augustus said. "You know what it looks like, Isaac? It looks like all the hopes we were foolish to hope."

I could picture the bright green car sitting in the driveway. "So she's inside?"

"Who cares where she is? This is not about her. This is about _you_."

Gus got out of the car, then opened my door and helped me out. He led me in the direction of Monica's house, then handed me an egg. The surface was cold and smooth and fragile as I ran my thumb over it. Before I lost my guts, I threw it in the direction of where I estimated Monica's car to be and heard the shell shatter against the concrete.

"A little to the left," Gus said.

"My throw was a little to the left or I need to aim a little to the left?"

"Aim left." I pivoted to the left. "Lefter." I rotated again. "Yes. Excellent. And throw hard." Gus handed me another egg. I threw it much harder than the first, and it didn't hit concrete, but it didn't sound like it had hit the car either.

"Bull's-eye!" Gus said.

"Really?" I asked, starting to feel the rush of adrenaline.

"No, you threw it like twenty feet over the car. Just, throw hard, but keep it low. And a little right of where you were last time."

I grabbed an egg from the carton in Gus's hands, accounted for all the instruction he had just given me, and arched it toward the car. It sounded like it hit something plastic.

"Yes!" Gus said. "Yes! TAILLIGHT!"

I thought I would feel bad for vandalizing Monica's car, but I felt vindicated. I knew that two wrongs didn't make a right, but I couldn't help thinking that she deserved to know what it was like to not be in control of what was happening to her, or, in this case, to her car.

I threw another egg and missed again. Then another and Augustus informed me that I hit the windshield. The next three nailed the trunk. I kept waiting for the guilt to set in, but it never did.

"Hazel Grace," Gus shouted. "Take a picture of this so Isaac can see it when they invent robot eyes."

He draped his hand around my shoulder and I tried to look in the direction of where Hazel should've been while she snapped the picture.

Behind me I heard the voice of a woman. "What in God's name–" It was Monica's mom.

"Ma'am," Augustus said, "your daughter's car has just been deservedly egged by a blind man. Please close the door and go back inside or we'll be forced to call the police."

I thought she would press the issue, demand answers, maybe even call the police on us, but she never said another word. So Augustus guided me back toward the car. "See, Isaac, if you just take–we're coming to the curb now–the feeling of legitimacy away from them, if you turn it around so they feel like _they_ are committing a crime by watching–a few more steps–their cars get egged, they'll be confused and scared and worried and they'll just return to their–you'll find the door handle directly in front of you–quietly desperate lives."

I climbed in the car wondering what Monica's reaction would be when she found out. I hoped she would understand, not so that she wouldn't be mad at me. Frankly, I didn't care if she was mad at me. I hoped she would understand because I wanted her to realize what she had put me through. And as Hazel drove away, I finally realized that I was glad Monica hadn't kept the promise. I was glad she hadn't stayed with me because a relationship that was forced by pity was not desirable. I wanted to have a relationship as beautiful as the one that had formed between Augustus Waters and Hazel Lancaster.


	11. Chapter 11

A couple of days after the egging incident, my dad had gone to work and my mom had left to take Graham to school and run some errands, so I was left home alone. This was a typical morning in my house, but I decided that I was tired of typical. I threw on some jeans and a t-shirt, slipped on my shoes, and grabbed my cane. I had become accustomed to using it, so I decided that I was going to go for a walk around the neighborhood. I just wanted to be get out of the house on my own for once.

I had driven through that neighborhood countless times, so I had no doubt that I could take my walk and be back before my mom knew I had left. I guided myself off the porch, down the driveway, and to the sidewalk. The concrete scraped beneath my shoes with every step I took. I couldn't see the sun, but I could feel it falling on my skin. I could tell when I was approaching a tree by the sound of chirping birds, and somewhere behind me, there was a dog barking relentlessly. Occasionally a car would pass, interrupting the sounds of nature.

I couldn't ignore the fact that the people in those cars were most definitely staring at me. The notion of being someone's version of a worse life crept up on me again. Surely seeing a young boy walking down the street with sunglasses and a cane led people to the _At least I'm not blind_ thoughts. That's what humans do, compare themselves to others in an effort to convince themselves that their lives are worth living. But what does that say about the people who have the "worse" lives?

People seem to have this idea that being disabled will lead to a sort of perpetual unhappiness. Sure, there were times when my disability made me unhappy. Hell, there were times when my ability made me downright angry. But this didn't mean that I was incapable of leading a happy life. That's why I didn't want to be someone's version of a worse life. Because that makes it seem as if my life carries less value, but that is a terrible misconception.

I had done a lot of thinking about the value of life on my walk. So much thinking that I hadn't paid enough attention to the route I had taken. I tried to listen for the barking dog, hoping that I could follow that sound back toward my house, but the barking had ceased. This led me to conclude that I was lost. I briefly considered calling my mom, but I knew she would never allow me to leave the house by myself again. I didn't want to lose that privilege before I had even gained it. Then I considered knocking on the door of the nearest house, but my parents had friends in this neighborhood. If I knocked on one of their doors, my parents would learn of my little expedition.

Then I had another idea. I pulled my phone from my pocket and told it to, "Call Augustus Waters."

When he answered with a mumble, I said, "Did I wake you up?"

"You could call me at four in the afternoon and you would wake me up. Seems like all I do is sleep. I need to be awake more often."

"How are you feeling?" I asked.

"At the moment, I'm feeling optimistic," he said.

Optimistic was good enough for me to mention my predicament.

"How about dragging your optimistic ass out of bed and doing me a favor?"

"What's that?" Gus asked.

"I decided to go for a walk this morning, and, well, I seem to be lost."

I could hear him laughing on the other end. "Your mom let you out of the house by yourself?"

"Not exactly," I said. "She doesn't know."

"Oh, shit. I can already hear the news report. 'A search party has formed with the hopes of finding a blind young man who disappeared from his house this morning.'"

"I'd like to avoid becoming the news topic of the day, if at all possible," I said. "Think you could come find me?"

"Yeah, man." He was trying his hardest not to laugh into the phone. "I don't mean to sound like an After School Special, but just, like, stay where you are. Hug a tree or something. I'll be there soon."

After he hung up, I used my cane to find the edge of the sidewalk, then I sat on the curb. I knew there was a possibility that someone would see me sitting there and attempt to ask me if I was okay. Fortunately, I never heard anyone approaching.

After about ten minutes I could hear my phone in my pocket. "Augustus Waters is calling."

When I answered he said, "I'm in your neighborhood. Do you happen to have any idea of where you are?"

I tried to remember the turns I had taken, but I couldn't. "Hold on a sec," I said as I scrambled to my feet and started walking along the edge of the sidewalk with my cane in front of me. I only had to walk about five feet before my cane ran into something. At the risk of being arrested for groping someone's mailbox, I laid my cane on the ground and ran my hands over it until I found the numbers. I traced them with my fingers as I said, "1… 6… 1… I don't know what street I'm on, but I'm in front of a house numbered 161."

"That's something, at least," Gus said. "I'll be there soon."

It wasn't long before I could hear the irregular acceleration that was typical of Augustus Waters. It was distant at first, but it grew closer and closer until finally I heard his brakes screeching in front of me.

He got out and helped me to the passenger's side door. Once we were both in the car he said, "You're five streets away from you house. Where exactly was your destination?"

"I just wanted to get out of the house," I said.

"Sucks being stuck in the house all the time, doesn't it?" he asked. "But if you get yourself lost again, I'm going to have you fitted with one of those tracking chips." I couldn't appreciate his laughter because I could hear the pain behind it, and all I could think about was the cancer that was eating away at his chest.

When we got to my house he came in to play Inception. We were halfway through our third attempt of the first level when he excused himself to the bathroom. My heightened hearing exposed the fact that he was in there puking his guts out. I thought about calling his mom, but I decided against it because I knew she would be like my mom and never allow him to leave his house again.

So I went to the kitchen, got him a glass of ice water, and took it back to my room to wait for him. By the time he came out of the bathroom, most of the ice had melted.

"You all right, dude?" I asked as I extended the cup in his direction.

"Thanks," he said, taking it from me. "I'm grand."

"You're lying," I said.

"It appears that my anti-nausea meds have decided to be worthless today."

"I shouldn't have made you come get me," I said.

"You didn't _make_ me do anything," he said. "I wanted to help out my friend. I'm not going to let a little case of cancer stop me." He said this as if he was battling nothing more than a cold. And I might as well have made him. I presented him with a situation in which someone needed rescuing. Of course he was going to jump at that opportunity to be a hero.

"Should we call someone to come get you?" I asked.

"No," he said without pause. "Don't tell anyone. Not my parents. Not Hazel Grace. This never happened."

A little over a week later, Augustus's went to the ER at Memorial where they decided that he needed to be admitted for overnight observation. I knew because his mom had called my mom. When I asked her what was wrong with him she told me that his mom said he was having chest pains, and the doctors thought his heart was working too hard.

This terrified me. One of the side-effects of the type of chemo he was undergoing was heart damage. No one seems to realize that chemo itself has the potential to kill. Being a member of Support Group for as long as I had, I'd heard plenty of stories of kids battling cancer only to have this chemo claim their lives, and I was afraid this was how Augustus's story would end.

When I asked if I could visit him, my mom said his family didn't want him to have any visitors. Frankly, that pissed me off. I know it shouldn't have. I understood that his family was also worried that this would be the end, so of course they didn't want people interrupting what could potentially be there last moments with him. But what about my last moments? I couldn't even remember the last thing he had said to me. He was my best friend. He made cancer jokes with me. He sabotaged every video game we ever played. He took me to egg my ex-girlfriend's car. He didn't hesitate to pick me up when I was lost in my own neighborhood. And it was possible that we would never do anything together ever again.


	12. Chapter 12

Merriam-Webster defines life as:

a. the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body

b. a principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings

c. an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction

According to this definition, Augustus was still very much alive. But society doesn't abide by this definition. Society treats the dying as if they're already dead. Hiding them from sight while immortalizing them through happy memories.

After he was discharged from the hospital, I kept waiting for him to get better, to regain his "quality of life," but he never did. Barely able to walk more than a few feet without tiring, he was practically bound to wheelchair. A G-tube in his stomach gave him the nutrition he needed because what little he did eat usually came back up. His medications to combat the constant pain kept him perpetually zoned out.

I knew all of this because I continually talked my mom into updating me on how he was doing. She was always hesitant to tell me because the updates were never good. His levels were continually declining. The chemo wasn't working. He was late-stage, and he was never going to be anything else. This time, the cancer was going to kill him. It was merely a matter of time.

I knew this. I understood it. But I don't think I ever _accepted_ it. And I'm glad I didn't. I might have treated him differently. I might have tried to shield myself from the shrapnel that was sure to come before the grenade had even exploded. So I went about life pretending Augustus's pin hadn't yet been pulled.

The sicker Augustus became, the more I bonded with Hazel. On one of the days when Augustus was feeling particularly late-stage and allowed his parents to knock him out with meds, Hazel called me from his house and asked if she could come over. "I can't watch his parents watching him moan in his sleep," she said. "But I can't go home either."

When she arrived, my mom was preparing dinner. Hazel offered to help, most likely just to be polite, but my mom took her up on the offer by having her cut up vegetables for the salad. Hazel obliged her request as I set the table. Then she informed me that Graham had come behind me and stacked all the dishes in the center of the table, so she helped me re-set the table.

As we ate, my parents asked her questions about her classes and Support Group and her parents. Then Graham chimed in to ask her about her oxygen tank, which prompted my mom to inform him that he was being rude. But Hazel said, "It's okay. I don't mind," and she explained her condition in terms that Graham could understand. I was amazed that he actually listened. I swear Graham had never remained quiet for that long in his entire life.

When we were done, she offered to help clear the table, but I wouldn't allow her to. It was Graham's job, and after making me have to re-set the table (with Hazel's help), I certainly wasn't going to allow him to get out of his responsibilities. Instead, I convinced her to play a few rounds of Inception with me.

Neither of us were particularly good, but we could still get farther as a team than I ever could with Augustus because Hazel wasn't hell-bent on saving the unsavable. And even then, winning wasn't easy. We still stumbled into ambushes or slipped off the sides of cliffs or triggered bombs. Even when we played the game as it was intended to be played, we could not elude death. And yet we never stopped trying.

Hazel hadn't mentioned Gus once since she had arrived at my house. I wasn't sure if she wanted to talk about him, but I did, so I tried to slip the topic in casually. "What have you and Gus been up to lately?"

"Mostly I go to his house," she said. "We did get to leave once about two weeks ago. We went to the Funky Bones and watched the kids play as we drank some champagne he conned one of his doctors into donating to him."

"Sounds fun," I said.

"It was." Hazel let out a quiet cough, which remind me that Gus was not the only one who was sick. "You know what he told me?" She didn't wait for me to answer. "He said he used to imagine himself as one of the kids playing on the bones. But now he imagines himself as the skeleton…"

He had already accepted that he was fighting a losing battle. "How's he looking these days?" I asked. "And don't give me my mom's spare-Isaac's-feelings version."

"His skin is pale and dry, and it's stretched thin over his bones. His appearance is strikingly ghost-like, but he still has life in his eyes. He hasn't given up yet."

"Augustus Waters will never give up," I said. "If he goes down, he'll go down fighting."

"I think he's already going down, Isaac." I could hear her voice cracking under the weight of emotion. "Do you know how I found him today? I found him mumbling incoherently in a pool of his own piss." Her breaths were raspy, more so than usual. "Oh god. Don't tell him I told you that! He'll hate me."

I put my hand out. Finding her forearm first, I awkwardly worked my way up to her shoulder and rested my hand there. "He could never hate you, Hazel. If I had a nickel for every time he talked about how much he loves you, I'd be a millionaire."

"Then why am I not enough?" Her voice was strained with sadness. "He has such high expectations for a 'good life' that I can never be enough."

I wrapped my arm around her shoulder and held her against me as she cried. I have to admit, I was glad to know that I wasn't the only one who was incapable of holding back the tears. "It's not that you're not enough," I said. "It's that he feels like he's not enough for you. He can't give you his last name, or a house with a white picket fence, or 2.5 children. He wants to be more than a victim of cancer, but he knows now that he never will be. He knows that he will never be special to the world."

"But he's special to me, and to you, and to his family," she said. "His life matters to us, and we're part of the world, are we?"

Hazel wasn't wrong. Augustus might not have realized it, but he had impacted the world, even if only a small part of it. He was a hero to us.

Merriam-Webster also defines life as:

a. the sequence of physical and mental experiences that make up the existence of an individual

I like this definition better. It doesn't restrict us to an existence of solidarity. It reveals that our experiences are an essential part of our existence. I was certain that after Augustus died, I wouldn't remember his life by his rate of growth or amount of breaths he'd taken. I would remember the experiences we had shared, and in that way, part of him would live as long as I did.

When I reentered my house after walking Hazel to her car, my dad stopped me in the living room and said, "She's a pretty girl, Isaac."

"Augustus thinks so, too," I said. I could never think about Hazel in that way because when I thought about her, I always thought of Augustus being by her side. There was no other way to imagine her.


	13. Chapter 13

I had asked Hazel to call me when it happened. I didn't want my mom to be the one to tell me. I knew she'd try to sugarcoat it, to dance around the truth, and that's not what I wanted. As twisted as it may have been, I wanted a straightforward declaration of his death. I didn't want to hear, "Everything happens for a reason," or "He's in a better place now." I wanted to hear, "He's gone, and it sucks, and it's not fair," and I knew Hazel was capable of delivering that version.

So when I was awakened by my phone saying, "Support Group Hazel is calling," my first thought was, _The cancer has finally won._ When I answered the phone, she said, "I'm coming to your house, Isaac." I could hear in her voice that she had been crying.

My stomach was in knots. "Is he gone?" Suddenly I wasn't sure if I wanted to know the answer.

"Not yet," she said. "I'm coming to get you."

"Hazel, what's happening?"

"The ambulance took him to the hospital–"

"Ambulance?!"

"Yes," she said. "He's still alive, but I don't know how much longer he has. I'll be at your house in five minutes."

I practically jumped out of bed. Tired and panicky, I was making quite a lot of noise as I fumbled around for some pants. I was tying one of my shoes when I heard my mom say, "Isaac, where do you think you're going?"

"Hazel's coming to get me," I said.

"It's 5 o'clock in the morning," she said. "The sun's not even up. Go back to bed and tell her she can come by later."

"No." I surprised myself when I said this because I never talked to my mom that way. "Gus is in the hospital again. I'm leaving with Hazel as soon as she gets here." I grabbed my cane and pushed my way past her, but then I felt bad, so I turned around and said, "I'm sorry, Mom. I just… I have to be there."

"I know, honey." She placed her soft hands on my face and pulled my head down to her, planting a kiss on my forehead. "Call me if you need anything."

I waited on the porch in the chill of the morning air. When I heard Hazel pull up, I started walking toward her car. She met me in my yard and led me the rest of the way. As she drove, I didn't ask her anything. I didn't want to upset her while she was behind the wheel of a moving vehicle. To fill the silence, she turned on a song by The Hectic Glow. I had never been more thankful for that band than I was in that moment.

When we arrived at the hospital, Hazel didn't get out of the car. After two of The Hectic Glow's songs had played in full, I said, "Are we going in?"

"His parents are here," she said. "They're allowed to see him, but I'm not because I'm not family. I love him, too! I should be allowed to see him!"

"At the risk of quoting Gus, 'The world is not a wish-granting factory,'" I said.

"It's not, is it?" she asked. "He probably doesn't want to see me anyway?"

"Why wouldn't he?"

"Because he asked me not to call 911, but I did anyway."

"Wait, you called the ambulance?" I asked. "What happened?"

"He called me just after 2:30 this morning saying something was wrong with his G-tube and I needed to help him–"

"His parents couldn't help him?"

"He wasn't home," she said. "He left without his parents knowing and went to the gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes because he couldn't find his."

"Only Augustus Waters would risk his life for a damn pack of cigarettes," I said.

"It wasn't the cigarettes he was risking his life for. It was his independence. He said he wanted to do one thing for himself."

I could understand that. I was grappling for my own independence. The difference between Augustus and me was that I was slowly regaining mine while Augustus would only continue to lose his. Little by little, his cancer was holding it hostage. Finally I said, "Why did you have to call 911?"

"When I got there he was already covered in his own vomit." The pitch of her voice was beginning to waver. "The skin around his G-tube was hot and red. He asked me not to call anyone, but then he puked again. He didn't even have the energy to lean out of the car. He just puked all over himself. It was bad, Isaac. I had to call an ambulance. I just had to."

"You did the right thing, Hazel."

"I know I did," she said. "But that doesn't make me feel any better. I can't get the imagine out of my head. He was sitting in that car, covered in his own vomit, crying and saying he hated himself, saying he wanted to die. And I was afraid that, for once, the world _would_ be a wish-granting factory." She was crying now. "He was starting to lose consciousness and the ambulance passed us. He was defeated and dying and there was nothing I could do to change either of those things."

"He would've died if it wasn't for you," I said. "He would've sat in his car until he passed out. He still has eyes in his head and he's too blind to realize that even heroes need saving every now and then."

Hazel and I sat in the waiting room. Occasionally, Gus's parents would come out to give us updates. He had infection, and the doctors were concerned about the rate at which it had spread. His immune system was weakened because of the chemo he was undergoing, so an infection could be life threatening if they could not get it under control. They were going to keep him in ICU to keep an eye on the infection while pumping him full of antibiotics. We weren't allowed to see him, but we didn't leave.

The updates were few and far between. At one point, Gus's mom came out to make some phone calls. Her voice was distant and quiet. She didn't want us to hear her, but I could. She was calling his sisters, telling them that they needed to come because the doctors said Augustus didn't have a lot of time left. My stomach clenched so tightly that I nearly threw up right then and there.

My entire body must have tensed because Hazel said, "What's wrong?"

She hadn't heard what Augustus's mom was saying, and I didn't want to be the one to tell her. "I'm just worried about Gus." Technically, that wasn't a lie.

We stayed in that waiting room for hours. Somehow it helped to know that I was in the same building as him. Like somehow, if I found out that he was in his final moments, I would be able to get to him. The rational part of me knew that this was unlikely, but the part of me that wanted to believe in wish-granting factories held onto the hope that I would be able to see him at least once more.

I didn't mean to, but I laughed out in the silence, and Hazel said, "What's so funny?"

"I just pictured my blind self attempting to break into the ICU to see Gus," I said. "Could you imagine? I probably wouldn't make it through the first door with out walking into a wall or tripping over a chair or something."

Hazel laughed. It was good to hear her laugh because I hadn't heard it in such a long time. "Why don't we just agree to forge our way in together?" she asked. "We could probably steal a couple of gowns and claim to be escaped ICU patients. We look the part, after all. They'd probably escort us back there."

"If that doesn't work, you can fake some breathing problems, and I'll tell them I'm your brother so they'll let me back there with you."

"Well, my lungs do suck at being lungs," she said. "It's a plausible plan."

"Look out, Augustus. We're crashing the ICU!"

We both laughed, too loud and too long. There was no doubt anyone in close proximity was staring, but I didn't care. We needed to laugh. Even if we both knew that none of our crazy schemes would work, it was nice to have something to hope for when we were feeling so hopeless.

After three days, they released Augustus from the hospital, infection free thanks to the antibiotics. But he was still very much riddled with cancer. He was still going to die.

At his parents' request, he spent his first day home resting. No visitors allowed. Hazel called and offered to drive me over there the next day, but I declined. She hadn't seen him for days, and I didn't want to impede their reuniting. I knew that, if he was strong enough, there would be lots of kissing and 'Okays,' and as much as I didn't want to admit it, their love for each other made me miss what I had with Monica. And if he _wasn't_ strong enough, I didn't want to be witness to that either. So Hazel and I agreed that I would visit him after she left.

The next day, my mom drove me to his house. His parents asked that we not ring the doorbell so we wouldn't wake Gus if he was sleeping, so my mom knocked lightly. When the door opened, Mrs. Waters invited us in and said, "We've had to up his medication for the pain, so there's no guarantee that he will wake up any time soon, but he appreciates you being here for him."

I started for the stairs to the basement, but Mrs. Waters stopped me by saying, "He's not down there anymore. We've moved him upstairs so we're better able to care for him. His bed's in the living room, by the window."

Mom led me to the couch and said, "He's to your left. Do you want me to stay?"

"I'll be fine," I said. "I'll call you when I'm ready to come home."

She patted me on the shoulder, then exchanged a few words with Mrs. Waters before leaving. I sat on the couch listening to him breathe. His breaths weren't as struggled as Hazel's, but they also weren't the soft, constant breaths typically emitted by a sleeping person. His lungs were struggling in their own way.

Mrs. Waters came to sit with me, and asked me questions about Graham, and rehab, and Support Group. I didn't really feel like answering them, but it helped to pass the time. Finally his mom said, "He's waking up." I felt her move from the couch. Quietly she said, "Gus, honey, Isaac's here to see you."

Several silent minutes passed before he finally said, "Hey, dude." His voice was weak, watered down by a mixture of exhaustion and pain and the medicine being used to combat that pain. "Glad to see you haven't abandoned this sinking ship."

"I suppose I'm loyal to the Captain," I said.

"That's good to know." He coughed, then groaned.

"You all right?" I asked.

"At this point, the meds don't really take away the pain," he said. "All they do is take the edge off." I hated that for him. He shouldn't have had to live the rest of his life in pain. "Like my new room?" he asked.

"From what I can see, there's nothing in here," I joked.

He laughed, which caused him to groan again. It was quieter this time. He was trying to mask the pain, but his attempt was futile. "It's got a nice view," he said. "There's an utter lack of privacy, but that's all right because I left my dignity at the hospital."

"Hazel and I considered crashing the ICU," I said.

"You should've. You missed one hell of a pity party."

I spent several hours on the couch, and during that time, I realized just how weak Augustus had become. His dad had to help him out of the bed to go the bathroom. His mom practically had to beg him to eat some of the soup she made for him, and he puked it up not even half an hour later.

He said he was starting to tired again, so I called my mom to come get me. As I was waiting for her to arrive, Augustus said, "I'm pretty pathetic, huh?"

"I think cancer's pretty pathetic," I said.

"Cancer wants to be alive, just as I do."

He was right. His cancer was losing, too. But I had no sympathy for the disease that had no right to exist.


	14. Chapter 14

The next time I visited Augustus, the Waters household was practically a three-ring circus. The door was answered by the voice of a child saying, "Who are you?"

"I could ask you the same thing," I said.

"I never tell my name to strangers," he said.

"Okay… I'm here to see Augustus," I said. "Can I come in?"

"Guess so." The kid couldn't tell a stranger his name, but letting one walk right in the house was apparently perfectly acceptable.

I barely made it through the door before he said, "Why are you wearing sunglasses in the house?"

"Because I can't see," I said.

"That's 'cuz you got sunglasses on."

"No, buddy, it's because I don't have eyes in my head."

"Wha– Mom? MOM!"

"What is it, sweetie?" a woman called from elsewhere in the house. I swear there is some sort of unwritten rule in which all mothers are required to call their children _sweetie. _

"HE DOESN'T HAVE EYES!"

I heard footsteps, then her voice was in close proximity when she said, "Go play with your cousins."

"But he doesn't–"

"Listen to your mother." I could practically hear the stern look on her face. The sound of small feet scampering away was loud at first, but it gradually dissipated as he got further away. "I'm sorry about that," the woman said. "I'm Julie, Gus's sister. You must be Isaac. Gus has told us so much about you. Please, come in. He's in the living room."

I used my cane to guide me to him. In the living room, I met Martha, Gus's other sister, and Chris and Dave, husbands of Julie and Martha. Augustus was awake, but between the three kids running in and out and the adults scattered around the room, I hardly got to talk to him.

I mostly talked to his nephews. Life without eyes was an unfathomable concept to them. I had to untie my shoe and retie it just to prove I was still capable of doing so, and you would think I'd just scored the winning touchdown at the Super Bowl with how loudly they cheered for me.

Chris and Dave went out back to the grill. I could smell the burgers cooking even with the door close. I was actually quite hungry, but when they asked me to join them outside, I declined. Augustus wasn't feeling well enough to go out, so I stayed behind with him and convinced his mom that it would be fine to leave him alone with me while she ate.

Once everyone was outside, Gus said, "They used idolize me like that."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"The boys," he said. "They used to be amazed by the fact that I could survive with only one leg. Every time they visited they would ask me to drive them around. Julie and Martha didn't like it because, let's face it, I'm a terrible driver. But that didn't matter to the boys. They were fascinated by the fact that I _could_ drive. I was a hero to them, and now they hardly pay me any attention. I'm nothing more than the dead uncle they'll mention when their friends ask them why they missed school."

"That's not true," I said.

"Yes, it is." There was not a hint of doubt in his voice. "I am nothing more than the cancer that has consumed my body. Everyone will remember how my own body killed me, but no one will remember me."

I rose from the couch and walked toward his bed. "You're wrong. I can't speak for anyone else, but I wouldn't give the cancer the honor of remembering it. I can assure you that I will remember _you_."

There was nothing left to do for Augustus other than keep him comfortable until death came for him. Anytime I received a phone call from Hazel, I was sure it was going to be The Phone Call. So I was surprised when Augustus called to ask if I could meet him at the Literal Heart of Jesus around 8 p.m.

As far as I knew, he hadn't left his house since returning from the hospital. He had hardly even left his bed. I was foolish enough to think that he might have been feeling better, that maybe he had more time than I thought. Then he said, "I would like you to prepare a eulogy for me and bring it with you. Please and thank you."

For a moment, I was speechless, but I eventually found the words to tell him I would oblige his request. After he hung up, I went to my mom and asked her to help me. She was hesitant. She didn't like to discuss the topic of Augustus's inevitable death. But I was finally able to convince her that this was something I had to do.

At first, I tried to be serious, but I could hardly even think the thoughts without crying. The only way to make it through this eulogy was to deploy the often inappropriate humor that Augustus and I had come to rely on, which my mom hated, but it was necessary.

My dad and I got in the car to head to the church. As he was driving he asked, "Are you sure you're up for this?"

"No," I said. "But I have to do it. For Gus." He didn't ask me anything else.

When we arrived, he helped me to make my way down to the basement. After the elevator doors opened, my dad said, "Augustus?" He asked this as if he wasn't sure. My dad hadn't seen him for quite a while, but I never expected that he wouldn't recognize him. Dad cleared his throat and said, "You're here alone?"

Augustus replied, "Yes, sir. I was hoping this could be between Isaac, Hazel Grace, and me. If that's okay with you?"

"I suppose that's all right." There was a hesitance in his voice, but he wasn't going to deny the request of an obviously dying boy. "Call me when you need me to pick you up." Then he leaned to my ear and whispered, "Or if Augustus needs medical attention." I wanted believe he was joking, but I knew he wasn't.

I saw this picture once of an emaciated African child doubled over on the ground, and behind the child there was a vulture waiting for him to die. With the way my father was acting, I imagined that, if I could see, I would see Augustus resembling the child, and death waiting in the background like the vulture. This allowed me to realize that one of the benefits of being blind was not having to witness terrifying things.

Augustus must have looked as if death was upon him. I was glad I couldn't see him.

When my dad left, I said, "So what exactly are we going to be doing?"

"There's an atrocious tradition of not allowing the dead to attend their own funerals," he said, "And I find that to be incredibly unfair. So I've decided that we're going to break that tradition. We're having my funeral."

He sounded like he was feeling better, and that terrified me. From my days of hospital stays and Support Group meetings, Augustus wasn't my first terminal friend. I knew how this worked. There was always one Last Good Day, and I wondered if this was his.

"The Literal Heart of Jesus is a fitting place for your funeral," I finally said.

"I thought so," Gus said, "Will you speak? At my actual funeral?"

I was honored that he wanted me to do that, but I hated the thought of being at his funeral, speaking about my best friend who was no longer existing. That was the true unfairness of a funeral. Nevertheless, I promised him I would, then he gave me directions to a lectern in the corner of the room. I had just found my way there when I heard the elevator doors open, and Augustus said, "Hazel Grace, you look ravishing."

My heart sank. She had _always_ taken the stairs. Taking the elevator was a sign of declining health, and I didn't want her health to be declining. I didn't even want to think about the possibility of losing Hazel so soon after losing Augustus. I had grown quite attached to her.

"I know, right?" she said. She didn't sound any sicker than she normally did, so that made me feel a little better. "You want to sit?" she asked. It took me a minute to realize she was talking to me.

"No, I'm about to eulogize. You're late."

"You're…I'm…what?" she said.

There was the sound of a chair moving across the floor as Augustus said, "I want to attend my funeral. By the way, will you still speak at my funeral?"

"Um, of course, yeah," she said.

"Awesome," Augustus said. "I'm hopeful I'll get to attend as a ghost, but just to make sure, I thought I'd–well, not to put you on the spot, but I just this afternoon thought I could arrange a prefuneral, and I figured since I'm in reasonably good spirits, there's no time like the present."

"How did you even get in here?" Hazel asked him.

"Would you believe they leave the door open all night?" Gus asked.

"Um, no," she said.

"As well you shouldn't." I could hear him talking through one of his crooked smiles. "Anyway, I know it's a bit self-aggrandizing."

"Hey, you're stealing my eulogy," I said. "My first bit is about how you were a self-aggrandizing bastard."

Hazel started laughing.

"Okay, okay," Gus said. "At your leisure."

I hesitated, wondering if I really could go through with it. Then I gathered my nerves and cleared my throat. "Augustus Waters was a self-aggrandizing bastard. But we forgive him. We forgive him not because he has a heart as figuratively good as his literal one sucked, or because he knew more about how to hold a cigarette than any nonsmoker in history, or because he got eighteen years when he should have gotten more."

"Seventeen," Gus corrected.

This was something I had struggled with in preparing the eulogy… how much time to give Gus. I wanted to believe he had a few months left, so I went with the age of eighteen. "I'm assuming you've got some time, you interrupting bastard.

"I'm telling you, Augustus Waters talked so much that he'd interrupt you at his own funeral," I improvised. "And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the metaphorical resonances of human waste production. And he was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness.

"But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see the world without him." I tried my hardest not to burst into tears. "And then, having made my rhetorical point, I will put my robot eyes on, because I mean, with robot eyes you can probably see through girls' shirts and stuff. Augustus, my friend, Godspeed."

The room was quiet for a while and I was trying to hold myself together, then Gus finally said, "I would cut the bit about seeing through girls' shirts."

Just hearing the sound of his voice caused my composure to fail. I gripped the sides of the lectern as the tears spilled down my cheeks. The more I tried to prevent the tears the faster they fell. Finally, I resigned to laying my head on the lectern and allowing the sadness to take over. Eventually I was able to say, "Goddamn it, Augustus, editing your own eulogy."

"Don't swear in the Literal Heart of Jesus," Gus said.

"Goddamn it," I said again as I raised my head and swallowed my emotions. "Hazel, can I get a hand here?" With the state I was in, I didn't trust myself to find my way back to a chair.

After helping me to a chair, I listened as she walked to the podium and began her eulogy.

"My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story and I won't be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because–like all real love stories– it will die with us, as it should. I'd hoped that he'd be eulogizing me, because there's no one I'd rather have…" She started to cry. I wanted to go to her, put my arm over her shoulder, give her the support she needed to get through this, but I stayed in my chair because this was her moment, and I didn't want to taint it in any way. "Okay, how not to cry," she said. How am I–okay. Okay."

She composed herself and continued. "I can't talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a _bigger_ infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our own little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I am grateful."

I was crying again. I wasn't sure how she had done it, but she managed to turn a math lesson into something beautiful. I supposed that was the nature of their relationship. Two cancer patients coming together should have been something complicated and confusing, but they had turned it into something undeniably beautiful.


	15. Chapter 15

The days of egging cars and playing videos games were long gone, never to be reclaimed. If I had eyes, I would say Gus was withering away before them, but I didn't need eyes to know that his roller coaster was descending at an alarming speed.

Visiting him was no simple task. Between Hazel, the constant parade of family members, and the times he was either sleeping off his pain meds or in too much pain to function, there was little time left for me. I didn't resent him for this, but I won't say I was happy about it.

In the handful of times I did visit him after his prefuneral, there were no more Good Days. The only thing the meds could do to help him was put him to sleep, but he would adamantly refuse the meds and subject himself to unspeakable amounts of excruciation. He couldn't eat or walk. He could barely speak. There were days when he handled it with admirable strength, and there were days when all he did was cry (whether from the pain or the sadness, I'll never know).

It was hard for me to listen to him crying because I knew he had never wanted anyone to see that side of him. Augustus treated the world as a stage. His life was a theatrical production in which he was the star. He presented himself as a strong, faultless, metaphorical resonance-seeking, gift to the world, but this was all an act. I knew it. He knew it. When cancer shattered his persona, the real Augustus Waters had to reveal himself: a weak, dying boy who desperately wanted to maintain his act but didn't have the strength.

Eyes or no eyes, I _was_ bearing witness to his death. And it wasn't anything like I had imagined it to be. I always thought of death as something that just happened. The person was there, then the person was gone. But I was wrong. Death is a process unique to each and every person, and Augustus was nearing the end of his process.

I used to hope that he would have more time, but at this point, I just wanted it to be over for him. I didn't want him to be gone, but I didn't want him to be suffering either. No matter what I thought would be best for him, Augustus clung to life. Fighting death was pointless, but he continued to fight relentlessly.

On one of the days I got to visit Augustus, Hazel and I went together. She tried sitting on the bed next to him, but it was too painful for him. He tried to insist that it wasn't; that he wanted her next to him. While I'm sure the latter was true, the former was not. I could hear the pain filling every one of his struggled words, and Hazel must have too. She moved from the bed to the couch where I was sitting.

Since Augustus couldn't do a lot of talking without wearing himself down, Hazel decided that she would read to him from _An Imperial Affliction_. The longer she read, the quieter Gus's breathing and groans of pain became. It was as if focusing on Hazel's reading was the only thing that could ease his discomfort.

After a while, Hazel stopped reading and said, "I think he's asleep."

"Now I understand why you and Gus are obsessed with that book," I say. I had only heard the parts Hazel read, but those parts left me wanting to hear the rest.

"Maybe I could read it to you sometime?" she said.

"That would be nice," I said.

"No stealing my girlfriend… after I'm gone," Gus said. He wasn't asleep, but with the way he had to force those words out, he needed to be.

"I wouldn't think of it," I assured him.

"You know I would never betray you like that," Hazel said, sounding offended.

"Only joking, Hazel Grace," Gus said. "Can you… write something down for me?"

"Of course," Hazel said. "I'll get some paper." She left the couch and returned within seconds. "Ready," she said.

Gus took a deep breath and said, "My parents are going to want to turn my room into some sort of weird shrine to me." He took several more long breaths. "We're going to make a list…" –the pitch in his voice was rising, revealing the exhaustion caused by speaking– "of what I want to give to who."

I felt like I was sinking into the couch. The weight of Augustus's death was bearing down on me, becoming too much to handle. It wasn't enough to know he was dying. Now we had to talk about what was going to happen after he was gone.

For a while, I listen to him struggle to form the words he needed to name the items and the people those items would go to.

The Hectic Glow CDs would go to Hazel. His favorite basketball would go to one of his nephews who was a young basketball star just as Augustus was at that age. And to me, he was leaving his copy of _An Imperial Affliction. _

"You'll need it… when they invent robot eyes," he said. "And don't you dare… think twice… about me. You'll get those robot eyes… and you'll like them."

"Okay," I said, trying to sound as if I wasn't about to burst into tears. I managed to listen to him designate a few more of his possessions to various people before I had to excuse myself.

I went out the front door and sat on the concrete steps, which were warm with heat of the summer. I tried to hold myself together, but I couldn't. I cried until I was hyperventilating. I couldn't stop thinking that I wanted to tell him to take his copy of _An Imperial Affliction _and shove it. Not because I didn't want it, but because I wanted him to be alive and still have use for it. I didn't like thinking about being the new owner of the book when Gus would never hold or open or read it again.

But I also knew that I would hate myself if I didn't accept the book. He was my best friend, and he wanted me to have it. Even if it was unlikely that I would ever be able to read it, it would still be something he gave to me. Although, I didn't really need a _thing_ to remember him by.

He was afraid we would forget him if we didn't have something concrete that once was his. Him giving away his stuff was a last ditch effort to be eternally remembered. What he failed to realize was, we weren't going to forget him. For as long as I lived, I knew I would not forget Augustus Waters.

When I was finally able to stop the waterfall of tears, I used to hem of my shirt to wipe my face. I turned toward the warmth of the sun and sat there for a moment, waiting for my certainly blotchy cheeks to return to a normal color, then I made my way back into the house.

I was met by the sound of Augustus's mom pleading with him to take his medicine. "You're in pain," she said. "We all know it. If you would just take the medicine, this process would be more pleasant for you."

"There is… nothing pleasant… about dying," Augustus said. He sounded like he was in the middle of fighting off an attacker. Now that I think about it, I guess he was.

"Please take the medicine, Gus," Hazel said.

"No," he said. "It makes… me sleep. To sleep… is to waste… the time… I have left."

His attacker was winning, but he refused to back down, and finally, I understood why. The night before my surgery, I didn't want to sleep because I knew how much I would be missing after I was blind. It was different for Gus; it was worse. He wasn't plagued by the fear of what he would miss. He was plagued by the knowledge that he would no longer have the opportunity to do… well, _anything_.

"If he doesn't want to take it, he shouldn't have to," I said. "It's his life." It probably seemed as if I was being rude and heartless, but I was doing this for him, giving him the control over his life he was so desperate for.

"He shouldn't spend the rest of his life in pain," his mom said.

"So he should spend the rest of his life unconscious?" I asked. "I'm not trying to be rude, Mrs. Waters. It's just… how he spends the rest of his life should be his choice."

"I guess you're right," Mrs. Waters said. Her voice was a mix of anger and sadness and defeat.

When she left the room, Augustus released a strained breath and said, "Please… read to me… again." So that's what Hazel did.


	16. Chapter 16

Eight days passed between the prefuneral and the moment when Augustus Waters took his last breath in the ICU at Memorial, surrounded by his parents and sisters. He hadn't won. His cancer hadn't won. Both wanted to survive, but neither did. There were no victors.

Following his final hospital admittance, I found it hard to sleep peacefully. I would toss and turn and wake up often. I was plagued by the anticipation of the phone call that would deliver the news of his death, but nothing could've prepared me for the moment that phone call came.

I was just beginning to drift back to sleep when my phone said, "Hazel Lancaster is calling." For a moment, my mind was blank, refusing to comprehend the purpose of the call. "Hazel Lancaster is calling." All at once, I felt the weight of the all the terrible things in the world crashing down on me. I couldn't breathe or move or think. "Hazel Lancaster is calling." Finally, I rolled to the side and grabbed my phone. She didn't have to say anything. The sound of her heartbroken cry was enough to reveal what she was going to say. "He's gone, Isaac." Her every word was filled with agony. "He was unconscious for a while before…"

I was shocked by how angry this made me. "No," I said. "You know what? Screw that! Screw this bullshit universe! Why the hell would God allow cancer to take the life of an innocent kid!? Goddammit he deserved a better life! Where are the goddamn trophies to break when you need them!?" And then my shouting gave way to uncontrollable sobbing, the kind that makes you shaky and breathless to the point of being lightheaded.

I could hear Hazel's parents in the background trying to console her, and I knew listening to me cry wasn't going to do her any good. So I told her to call me if she needed, and she told me to do the same, then we hung up. I was left alone with nothing but the feeling of the tears rolling down my cheeks and the unbearable ache in my chest. Then I heard the half-asleep voice of Graham saying, "Isaac?"

"Go back to bed," I said.

"No," he said.

"Get lost, Graham!" Not even remotely in the mood to deal with his antics, I would not have hesitated to drag him back to his bedroom if I needed to. But then he said, "Your yelling woke me up… I heard you crying. Is Augustus… He died, didn't he?"

I didn't know what to say, partially because I didn't want to say it out loud and partially because I didn't want to traumatize my ten year old brother. But I decided that Graham understood things that other ten year olds would not since he had a brother who'd had cancer. "Yes," I said. This simple word was accompanied by the sensation of a knife burrowing into me. This pain was worse than any I had experienced before, and there were no medicines capable of relieving it. All I could do was cry.

Graham's bare feet shuffled across the floor, then he sat next to me on my bed. He started patting my back and said, "Mom says it's okay to cry. I cried a lot when you were having your surgery because I was scared. I don't guess you're scared. But still… it's okay to cry."

I appreciated that Graham was trying to comfort me, but telling me it was okay to cry was pointless. Whether or not it was okay, there was no stopping the tears. Still, I was glad to know that my brother cared enough to be there for me, even if he had no way of understanding what I was going through.

He never went back to his room. He fell asleep with his head on my shoulder, so I laid him back in my bed and covered him with my comforter. By this time, my eyes were dry. There were no tears left to cry.

I moved to sit in the chair in front of my computer and felt around for the copy of _An Imperial Affliction _Gus had given to me. I let the pages slide through my fingers over and over as I sat there wondering. Wondering what the nurses and doctors were doing since they had one less patient to care for… Wondering what his mom was going to do now that she had lost her only child… Wondering what his dad was going to do now that he had lost his only son… Wondering what his sisters were going to do now that they had lost their brother… Wondering what Hazel was going to do now that the love of her life was gone… Wondering what I was going to do without my best friend… I did a lot of wondering that night.

Eventually, I heard my mom's phone ringing. The sleep was quickly erased from her voice as she said, "Oh no. Oh God, Emily. I'm so sorry." She was quiet for a moment, then she said, "At least he went peacefully… If there's anything we can do for you and Mark, don't hesitate to let us know."

As soon as she hung up the phone, I could hear her abandoning her bed. She was at my door within seconds. "Isaac… honey–"

"I already know, Mom. Hazel called me hours ago."

"Oh, sweetie… Why didn't you wake me up? You shouldn't have forced yourself to suffer alone."

Her use of the word suffer made me cringe. The word suffer has three different definitions:

to experience pain, illness, or injury

to experience something unpleasant (such as defeat, loss, or damage)

to become worse because of being badly affected by something

My level of suffering paled in comparison to Gus's. He spent the last few weeks suffering in every sense of the word. Knowing this made me nauseous.

Finally, I gestured toward my bed and said, "Graham was with me."

"You told Graham?" she asked disapprovingly.

"He knew, Mom. Let's not pretend he hasn't had experience with this. He knows what cancer is capable of."

"I suppose you're right," she said.

I didn't think it was possible, but I started to cry again. My mom came to me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. "Just try to remember that he's not in pain anymore."

That's exactly the sort of thing I didn't want to hear. "Rationalizing his death isn't going to make it hurt any less." I had so much anger snaking its way through my veins. "He never should've been in pain in the first place! Cancer is bullshit!"

"Isaac, I know you're hurting, but you shouldn't speak like that…"

"It's the truth, Mom."

She sighed and said, "Is there anything I can do for you? Anything I can do to make this easier?"

"I just want to be alone," I said. I shouldn't have pushed her away, but the anger was thinking for me. I wasn't capable of being empathetic in the wake of knowing I would never speak to my best friend again.

My dad came in just before he was supposed to leave for work. He didn't speak. He just put his hand on my shoulder and stood there. He never knew how to handle emotional situations, so this was his way of expressing his sympathy. He stood motionless for several moments, then left my room.

When Graham woke up, he tried to talk to me again, but I was too exhausted to form words, so he eventually left me alone. Throughout the day, my mom would come in, asking me if I wanted something to eat, or if there was anything she could do for me. She didn't understand that there was absolutely nothing that could be done.

Nothing was going to change the fact that Gus was an innocent victim in the war against cancer. The fault was not in Augustus Waters, but in his stars.


	17. Chapter 17

On the day of his funeral, my house was eerily quiet. Even Graham was participating in the on-going moment of silence. The lack of noise exemplified everything – the crunch of my cereal as I chewed, the splashing of water around my feet as I showered, even the creak of my bedroom door opening seemed to echo through the house.

I stood in front of my closet running my hands over the clothes hanging in front of me. I'd been blind long enough to memorize the contents of my closet thanks to my mom's strategic hanging along with the way the different fabrics felt. But on this day, my thoughts and memories and senses were jumbled. As soon as I moved my hand away from an article of clothing, I couldn't remember what it felt like. I must have touched the same shirt fifteen times before I finally backed away from the closet and sat on the bed, no more sure of what I was going to wear than I was when I had awoken that morning. One thing I was certain of was that I didn't want to be choosing what I was going to wear to my best friend's funeral.

So I just sat there, on the edge of my bed, going over the revised, family friendly eulogy I had memorized for him. I felt like I was spiraling downward, like the nothingness my lack of eyes had left me living in for months was finally pulling me in, and there was nothing I could do but allow it to consume me.

It felt as if an eternity had passed before my mom came into my room and said, "Why aren't you dressed? We have to leave soon."

"I don't know what to wear." Even though the words came from my mouth, it seemed like someone else was speaking for me.

She sighed out of pity and walked to my closet. The hangers clanked as she slid them across the bar. Eventually she laid some clothing on the bed next to me and said, "Honey, you have to get changed so we can go."

Before she could leave the room, I said, "What did you pick out?"

"What's that?" she asked.

"I want to know what I'm wearing," I said. "If I'm going to have to live with the memory of being at my best friend's funeral, I at least want that memory to be accurate."

"Black slacks, a purple button-down, a blue jacket, and the black and blue striped tie," she said.

"That's a lot of colors."

"You'll look nice, Isaac."

"I guess," I said as I stood up and pulled my shirt over my head. My mom left the room, and I put on the clothes she picked out for me. I wasn't accustomed to wearing button-down shirts, so I fumbled with the buttons. Once I was finally dressed, I grabbed the tie and took it to my mom. As she was tying it for me, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. "Hazel Lancaster is calling." This brought on a flashback of the moment I found out Gus was gone.

"Are you going to answer that?" my mom said, pulling me back from the brink of bursting into tears.

"Hazel Lancaster is calling." I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone.

Me: "Hi, Hazel."

Hazel: "I don't think I can do this, Isaac."

Me: "If you don't go, you'll regret it."

Hazel: "I don't think I can see him like that."

Me: "Yes, you can, Hazel. You're a strong person."

Hazel: "No, I'm not. I can't, Isaac. I've already told my parents I'm not going."

Me: "Hold on—"

I covered the receiving end of my phone with my hand and said, "Mom, I need you to take me to Hazel's house."

"We'll be late."

"Gus doesn't need me anymore. Hazel does." Admitting this to myself allowed the stabbing pain to return full force, but it was true. Hazel needed me. I wasn't going to let her down. I owed it to Augustus to be there for her.

"All right," my mom said. "I'll have your father take Graham on to the church, and I'll take you to Hazel's."

I put the phone back to my ear and said, "I'll be your house in twenty minutes." Then I hung up, not leaving room for Hazel to protest.

My mom led me to the front door of the Lancaster home and rang the doorbell. Mrs. Lancaster answered the door saying, "Isaac. Hello."

"Hi, Mrs. Lancaster. I need to speak with Hazel."

"She's not feeling well right now."

"We'll go—" my mom tried to say, but I interrupted her by saying, "Hazel knows I'm coming."

Mrs. Lancaster hesitated, then said, "All right, come on in. She's in the backyard." As she was leading us through the house she said, "She's had a rough few weeks. Please remember that." She then slid the door open and said, "Hazel, Isaac is here to see you."

"Okay," Hazel said. She wasn't crying at that moment, but it was obvious she'd been crying recently.

"Can I speak to her alone?" I asked. "It'll only take a moment."

"I suppose that's fine," Mrs. Lancaster said.

I turned to my mom and said, "I've got it. You can let me go." She released my arm, and I stepped through the sliding-glass door, closing it behind me. "Marco," I called out.

"Polo," she said, immediately understanding my need for a voice to guide me.

I began walking toward the direction of her voice, using my cane to help me avoid any obstacles as I made my way off the patio and across the grass. "Marco."

"Polo."

"Marco."

"There's a piece of wood about five feet in front of you," she said. "I'm sitting on it. You can sit too, if you want."

I carefully found myself a seat on the wooden plank, but I didn't say anything. I wanted Hazel to lead this conversation. I didn't want to guilt her into going if she truly didn't want to go, but I also wanted didn't want to leave her with the guilt of not going if she truly did want to go. Not unlike Augustus, Hazel was going to have a short life, and the rest of her existence didn't need to be filled with regret.

"There used to be a swing set behind us," Hazel said. "My dad built it when I was healthy and strong, and now I'm the opposite of that. It was just sitting there, taking up half the yard, taunting me with its uselessness. I never told anyone that… until I told Gus."

"He told me he helped you get rid of it," I said.

"You know, out of all the grand gestures he planned, it was that simple, impromptu gesture that made me realize just how much I liked him. That was the day I knew I was falling in love with him."

"He never realized that he was most impressive when he was being himself."

We sat quietly for a moment, then she said, "I miss him so much, Isaac."

"I do, too," I said. "And if you don't want to go to his funeral, I'll support that. But if you think you'll have even an ounce of regret, then I think you should go."

"He asked me to be there," Hazel said. "I have his eulogy prepared, but how can I see him like that, the shell of a person that used to be?"

"How have you endured chemo or radiation or living with crap lungs? You're strong Hazel. You've already proven that you can take anything life throws at you. Some things will be harder than others. This may be the hardest thing you ever have to do. But you can do it."

"I think you're right, Isaac. I think I need to go. I need to say goodbye to him."

"Well, then let's go," I said, standing from the wood. Hazel took my arm and led me back to the house.

When we arrived at the church, my mom insisted that we find my dad and Graham. Once that mission was accomplished, I asked my dad to lead me to the casket. I was met by Gus's parents, both of them embracing me. They sounded exhausted and broken in a way that no one should ever sound. I told them I was sorry for their loss and that I missed Augustus greatly.

"You were such a good friend to him," Gus's mom said.

"We want you to know how much we appreciate that," his dad said.

And then my dad guided me to the left. "He's right in front of you. I'll give you a moment alone."

The fact that I couldn't see him bothered me, but I was aware of the fact that this didn't really have anything to do with my blindness. When I found out I would lose my eyesight, I had known I would never actually see Augustus again, but he still existed despite what I could see. Now he was gone. Never to be seen again by anyone. That's what bothered me.

I'm certain there were people watching, but I didn't care. I reached into the coffin, first feeling the fabric of his suit, then I worked my way to his hand. It was cold and dry, but I gripped it and said, "Dude, I want you to know that I'll never forget you."

The funeral began with the minister talking about how courageous and heroic Augustus was throughout his battle. All I could think about was that if Gus would've been there, this speech would've pissed him off. Finally the minister asked us to pray, and after what he judged to be a sufficient amount of time to pray for Augustus and his family, he called me up to give my eulogy.

My mom led me to the front of the room, squeezed my arm, and stepped away, so I began. "Augustus Waters was the Mayor of the Secret City of Cancervania, and he is not replaceable. Other people will be able to tell you funny stories about Gus, because he was a funny guy, but let me tell you a serious one: A day after I got my eye cut out, Gus showed up at the hospital. I was blind and heartbroken and didn't want to do anything and Gus burst into my room and shouted, 'I have wonderful news!' And I was like, 'I don't really want to hear your wonderful news right now,' and Gus said, 'This is wonderful news you want to hear,' and I asked him, 'Fine, what is it?' and he said, 'You are going to live a good and long life filled with great and terrible moments that you cannot even imagine yet!'

I had planned to say more, but I had spent the entire day trying not to cry, and that was a terrible mistake. All the emotions came crashing in at once, and I couldn't keep myself together long enough to say anything else. So my mom led me back to my seat.

As I tried to cry silently, I listened to one of Gus's high school friends telling stories of his basketball days. I couldn't help but think that he didn't really know Augustus at all. Anyone who really knew Gus knew that he despised basketball.

When the friend was finished, the minister said, "We'll now hear a few words from Augustus's special friend, Hazel."

There were murmurs around the room at the use of the term _special friend_. Hazel wasted no time correcting that by saying, "I was his girlfriend." This made me laugh, along with most of the other people in the room. As the laughter died down, Hazel began her eulogy, but I could tell it was written to please his family. No one would ever know of the eulogies Hazel and I had shared with him at his prefuneral. Only Augustus had been able to hear our true eulogies to him.


	18. Chapter 18

A couple of days after Augustus's funeral, my mom tried to convince me to go to a movie with her and Graham, but I didn't want to do much of anything except sit around the house. My emotions were all over the place. One minute I was crying, the next I wanted to punch something, and other times I just felt numb. None of this was conducive to venturing into public.

I could tell my mom was worried about the instability of my emotions, and I knew she was only trying to help in any way she could, but I told them to go without me. It was obvious that my unwillingness to leave only worried her more. She didn't push me to join them, but I was sure she would soon be scheduling me a visit the first therapist available.

As they were leaving, I heard her telling Graham that they would stop by the grocery store to get some candy and hide it in her purse. Graham shouted, "Yes! You're the best, Mom!" as he shut the door behind them. I envied his ability to express excitement. There was a void where my ability to express excitement used to be because anything worth being excited about was always removed from my life in some way or another.

About ten minutes after they left, someone was knocking on the front door. When I opened it, I could hear the struggled breathing that always accompanied Hazel. This reminded me that Hazel was living on borrowed time. She too would eventually be removed from my life. This made me want to punch a hole through my wall, but I swallowed that urge and pretended I was fine as I said. "My mom took Graham to a movie."

"We should go do something," Hazel said.

"Can the something be play blind-guy video games while sitting on the couch?" With the realization that Hazel was going to die too soon, just like Augustus did, I was fairly certain I never wanted to leave my house again.

"Yeah, that's just the kind of something I had in mind." Whether or not she meant this, I appreciated her willingness to stay at my house.

We played the game for a couple of hours, talking only to the computer, not to each other. For a while, we were serious in trying to complete the mission, but we eventually decided that trying to trick the game into saying humorous things was more amusing.

Hazel: "Touch the cave wall."

Computer: "You touch the cave wall. It is moist."

Me: "Lick the cave wall."

Computer: "I do not understand. Repeat?"

Hazel: "Hump the moist cave wall."

Computer: "You attempt to jump. You hit your head."

Me: "Not _jump._ _HUMP_."

Computer: "I do not understand."

Me: "Dude, I've been alone in the dark in this cave for weeks and I need some relief. HUMP THE CAVE WALL."

Computer: "You attempt to ju—"

Hazel: "Thrust pelvis against the cave wall."

Computer: "I do not—"

Me: "Make sweet love to the cave."

Computer: "I do not—"

Hazel: "_FINE_. Follow left branch."

Computer: "You follow the left branch. The passage narrows."

Hazel: "Crawl."

Computer: "You crawl for one hundred yards. The passage narrows."

Hazel: "Snake crawl."

Computer: "You snake crawl for thirty yards. A tickle of water runs down your body. You reach a small mound of rocks blocking the passageway."

Hazel: "Can I hump the cave now?"

Computer: "You cannot jump without standing."

I felt like I was stuck in tunnel with my path blocked, unable to stand, much less jump. I knew then that I would never find my way out until I acknowledged what was standing in my way. So I said, "I dislike living in a world without Augustus Waters."

And the computer said, "I don't understand—"

"Me neither," I said. "Pause."

I dropped the remote between Hazel and me and said, "Do you know if it hurt or whatever?"

"He was really fighting for breath, I guess," Hazel said. "He eventually went unconscious, but it sounds like, yeah, it wasn't great or anything. Dying sucks."

"Yeah," I said.

With the way Hazel had said _dying suck_ as if she too was in the process of dying, I wondered if talking about Augustus was a bad idea. It's not as if I had expected her to live forever. I knew she would die, too young, and too soon. But I was worried that the pain of losing Augustus was going to lead her to give up, to stop fighting. I had to remind myself that she was strong, and that, even though she loved Augustus, she was independent. She wouldn't give up unless _she_ was ready. Finally I said, "It just seems so impossible."

"Happens all the time," Hazel said.

"You seem angry," I said.

"Yeah," she said.

I really had no room to accuse her of being angry when I felt a sense of unrelenting anger almost constantly. So I stayed quiet for a while, listening to the sounds of the portable oxygen tank that kept Hazel alive. Her entire life was dependent on a machine that forced her lungs to expand properly. It forced her to continue living, and day after day, she allowed it to. She wasn't ready to give up. I realized then that I could talk about Augustus without sending her to her grave. "Gus really loved you, you know."

"I know," she said.

"He wouldn't shut up about it," I said.

"I know."

"It was annoying."

"I didn't find it that annoying," she said.

"Did he ever give you that thing he was writing?"

"What thing?"

"The sequel or whatever to that book you liked."

"What?" she asked again. He obviously hadn't mentioned this to her.

"He said he was working on something for you but he wasn't that good of a writer."

"When did he say this?"

"I don't know. Like, after he got back from Amsterdam at some point."

"At which point?" she pressed.

"Um… Um, I don't know. We talked about it over here once. He was over here, like—uh, we played with my email machine and I'd just gotten an email from my grandmother. I can check on the machine if you—"

"Yeah, yea where is it?"

She followed me to the computer where I told her how to pull up the email. As we were waiting for it to load, I realized that I hadn't checked it since before he died. Selfishly, I hoped that maybe he had sent something for me as well.

"You might want to message your grandmother back again," Hazel said. I could hear her using the mouse to scroll through the messages. "There's nothing from Gus." She sounded as discouraged as I felt.

"I'm sorry, Hazel."

"I'm gonna go to his house," she said. She wasn't going to give up that easily. If Augustus had written something for her, she was going to find it.


End file.
